Summary Of And Then There Were None By Agatha Christie

The Personal(ity) Aspect of Justice Wargrave
In the “Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories” S.S. Van Dine, the author, explains Twenty rules that need to be followed to write a great mystery novel. In rule Nineteen he states, “The motives for all crimes in detective stories should be personal.” This means that the killing/s can’t be random. They murdered has to know the victim/s , and they have to have done something to the murderer/s to make him/her want to kill him/her. Agatha Christie, the famous author of the great novel And Then There Were None, did not prove this rule, because Justice Wargrave did not know any of the victims personally and he did not care about the people, only the act of the perfect crime. The fact that Justice
Wargrave did not know any of the victims personally does not prove rule Nineteen of “Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories”, by S.S. Van Dine to be true in And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie. On page 139 Emily Brent says “I quite like the fact that we are all strangers to one another.” Meaning that they don’t know any of each other at all and don’t have any personal relationships or connections. This proves that Justice Wargrave had to hunt and search for victims without any personal connections proving that the murders were not personal. Again on page 264 in the manuscript, Justice Wargrave says “I began, secretly, to collect victims…” This also proves that he didn’t know any of the victims personally and he had to search for his victims. He didn't know anyone who he was going to kill right away, he made a preposterous and an impromptu decision to ferret people who had killed others but could not be punished by law. This evidence proves that none of the guests knew each other at all and the killings performed by Justice Wargrave were not personnel. And that Agatha Christie did not prove rule number 19 in “Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories” to be true her novel And Then There Were None. Justice Wargrave did not care about the people he was killing only that he wanted to perform the most malevolent crime in the most perfect way for his own enjoyment.
This again proves that Agatha Christie did not follow rule 19 of “Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories” in her novel And Then There Were None. On page 262 in the manuscript Wargrave writes, “I have a definite sadistic delight in seeing or causing death. I remember experiments with wasps-with various garden pests….From an early age I knew very strongly the lust to kill.” In this statement he admits that causing others pain and death bring him massive amounts of joy. He had even been killing animals since a very young age and also knew that he had to or needed to kill. He was like a drug addict the more he killed the more he needed to kill and the more bodies the better. This act of mass murder was not personal at all to the victims it has been just an inevitable result and epilogue to these massive feelings of pleasure and need from killing. Also in the manuscript on page 262 he writes, “It may be understood-I think a psychologist would understand-that with my mental makeup being what it was, I adopted the law as a profession. The legal profession satisfied nearly all my instincts.” When he writes this means that the more he was in the law profession and involved in murder cases he didn’t to kill because hearing specific details about death and murder repletely satisfied him. But like I wrote earlier
he’s like a drug addict the more he kills and hears or talks about death or murder the more he needs to kill. So, since he’d been in the legal profession for so many years he snapped and needed to kill, but since he was in the legal profession for so long he didn’t need to kill one or two people, he needed to commit murder on a grand scale. All this information proves that the people he killed didn’t matter to him, only the satisfaction of killing on a grand scale in the most perfect way he could mattered. The that proves that the killings of all the guests on the island and more weren’t personal to Wargrave whatsoever. Which also proves that rule Nineteen of, “Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories” by S.S. Van Dine, was not followed by Agatha Christie in her famous novel And Then There Were None. As great an author as Agatha Christie was she did not follow rule 19 of “Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories” in her great book And Then There Were None, because the murders in the book were not personal. This is because Justice Wargrave did not know any of his victims and he did not care about the people, only the act of the perfect crime. As great a book And Then There Were None is there is much evidence that proves Agatha Christie did not follow rule 19 of “Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories” which state, “The motives for all crimes in detective stories should be personal.”