And Then There Were None

‘“Watch and pray,’ he said. ‘Watch and pray. The day of judgment is at hand.’”

The old man who sits across from Blore in the carriage foreshadows the danger that will unfold on Soldier Island. The phrase “the day of judgment” provides a clue into who “Mr. Owen” really is, Mr. Justice Lawrence Wargrave, who will not be revealed as the main antagonist until the very end of the novel.

“She had pictured it differently, close to shore, crowned with a beautiful white house. But there was no house visible, only the boldly silhouetted rock with its faint resemblance to a giant head. There was something sinister about it. She shivered faintly.”

The ominous appearance of Soldier Island is another instance of foreshadowing. Vera notes that the island feels “sinister,” an early hint at the evil that will unfold on the island over the course of the novel. The rock that is shaped like a giant head symbolizes that the elaborate murder mystery that will soon take place was crafted by the mind of one man alone.

“It was a fantastic moment. In it, Anthony Marston seemed to be something more than mortal. Afterwards more than one of those present remembered that moment.”

Anthony Marston’s purpose in the novel is to jumpstart the conflict as the first victim to die on Soldier Island. His grand entrance stands in juxtaposition to his shockingly abrupt death. The note that more than one of those present would remember Anthony’s entrance is early foreshadowing that he will be the first to be murdered.

“There was something magical about an island—the mere word suggested fantasy. You lost touch with the world—an island was a world of its own. A world, perhaps, from which you might never return.”

There is stark irony in Dr. Armstrong’s thinking because, even though he does not know it yet, he will never return from Soldier Island. Soldier Island is not a fantasy, but rather, a nightmare in which he will lose all touch with the outside world. Dr. Armstrong does not know it, but Justice Wargrave (aka “Mr. Owen”) has already arranged for Sticklehaven residents to ignore any distress signals they may receive, cutting off the guests on Soldier Island from any help from the outside world.

“Mr. Justice Wargrave reflected on the subject of Constance Culmington. Undependable like all women. His mind went on to the two women in the house, the tight-lipped old maid and the girl. He didn’t care for the girl, cold-blooded young hussy. No, three women, if you counted the Rogers woman. Odd creature, she looked scared to death. Respectable pair and knew their job.”

Justice Wargrave’s thoughts on the three women in the house leave a clue that he is the murderer on Soldier Island. He calls Vera a “cold-blooded young hussy,” which could be passed off as another example of a man evoking sexist thinking since gender dynamics do play a major role in the novel. However, Wargrave’s hostility toward Vera is intense considering they are supposedly strangers, so he wouldn’t have any basis for calling Vera, whom he hasn’t even spoken to yet, “cold-blooded.”

“Vera said, ‘It’s an amusing idea, isn’t it?’ Mr. Justice Wargrave grunted: ‘Remarkably childish,’ and helped himself to port.”

Justice Wargrave calling the soldier figures childish throws the other guests, as well as the readers, off his scent. Wargrave presents himself as a no-nonsense, no-frills judge, so it falls against his nature that he should create a murder mystery in the style of a child’s nursery rhyme. Secretly, as he admits in his confession letter at the end of the novel, he has a very theatrical, romantic imagination which plays into his elaborate plan.

“There was a silence—a comfortable replete silence. Into that silence came The Voice. Without warning, inhuman, penetrating…”

The Voice is described as “inhuman.” The only other time the word “inhuman” is used in the novel is in Chapter 9, and it is in reference to Justice Wargrave who is “holding court” as they each discuss their alibis during the time of the murders. This links Wargrave again to the murders as foreshadowing to his actions that are revealed at the end of the novel.

“Ulick Norman Owen! In Miss Brent’s letter, though the signature of the surname is a mere scrawl the Christian names are reasonably clear—Una Nancy—in either case you notice, the same initials. Ulick Norman Owen—Una Nancy Owen—each time, that is to say, U. N. Owen. Or by a slight stretch of fancy, UNKNOWN!”

As Justice Wargrave writes in his confession letter, he has a romantic imagination and therefore wanted to conduct a murder that was as theatrical as it was grim. This is reflected in his pseudonym “Mr. Owen,” which is wordplay on “unknown.” Wargrave also writes in his confession letter that like all artists, he enjoys recognition, so Wargrave pretended to “figure out” the wordplay because he wanted others to recognize Mr. Owen’s (i.e., his) brilliance.

“Oh, yes. I’ve no doubt in my own mind that we have been invited here by a madman—probably a dangerous homicidal lunatic.”

Justice Wargrave is the one to declare that they’ve been invited by a “homicidal lunatic,” which is ironic because based on his confession letter, he doesn’t think of himself as mad. Rather, he thinks his murderous acts are justified because he only killed those who were guilty. He thus believes he delivered justice, emphasizing the novel’s major themes of death and justice.

“Not quite the act of a pukka sahib, I’m afraid. But self-preservation’s a man’s first duty. And natives don’t mind dying, you know. They don’t feel about it as Europeans do.”

Philip Lombard is one of the few guests who shows absolutely no remorse for his crime of leaving 21 members of an East African tribe to die, which may prompt readers to incorrectly guess that he is the killer. Lombard flippantly offers a highly insensitive explanation, revealing that he is ignorant, racist, and immoral. Like most of the guests, Lombard selfishly chose to leave others to die so he could have the advantage.

“Dead? Dead? That young Norse God in the prime of his health and strength. Struck down all in a moment. Healthy young men didn’t die like that, choking over a whisky and soda….No, they couldn’t take it in.”

Anthony Marston is a jarring wake-up call to the rest of the guests that death comes for everyone, sometimes sooner rather than later. Their reaction to Anthony’s death is telling because each of the guests were responsible for the death of someone else, but they justified it by deeming those they killed as lesser, unlike Anthony Marston, whom they viewed as the pinnacle of human perfection. Vera calls Cyril a weak, spoiled child; Mr. and Mrs. Rogers’s employer’s health was failing; and Beatrice Taylor, according to Emily Brent, was immoral and pregnant out of wedlock.

“If this had been an old house, with creaking wood, and dark shadows, and heavily panelled walls, there might have been an eerie feeling. But this house was the essence of modernity. There were no dark corners—no possible sliding panels—it was flooded with electric light—everything was new and bright and shining. There was nothing hidden in this house, nothing concealed. It had no atmosphere about it. Somehow, that was the most frightening thing of all….”

Christie subverts a common trope in the mystery and thriller genre by describing the house bright and modern as opposed to old and creepy. Just like its guests, the mansion looks like it has nothing to hide. The guests are all hiding deadly secrets and the mansion will soon be the site of each of their murders, and the novel’s setting reflects the inner worlds of its inhabitants.

“Carefully, Mr. Justice Wargrave removed his false teeth and dropped them into a glass of water. The shrunken lips fell in. It was a cruel mouth now, cruel and predatory. Hooding his eyes, the judge smiled to himself. He’d cooked Seton’s goose all right!”

Justice Wargrave is one of the few guests who does not feel remorse over the accusation made against him on the gramophone. Wargrave does not feel remorse but feels great satisfaction. His cruel delight in causing Seton’s death foreshadows his confession letter at the end of the novel when he writes about the pleasure that he feels while watching the guilty suffer.

“Ten to one, the woman will give the show away. She hasn’t got the nerve to stand up and brazen it out. She’s a living danger to her husband, that’s what she is. He’s all right. He’ll lie with a straight face till kingdom comes—but he can’t be sure of her! And if she goes to pieces, his neck’s in danger! So he slips something into a cup of tea and makes sure that her mouth is shut permanently.”

Blore is the most outwardly sexist character, which constantly hampers his ability to correctly guess that Justice Wargrave is the culprit they are looking for. His comments about Mrs. Rogers suggest that women are too hysterical to act, but his suspicion toward Emily Brent later contradicts this. He either views women as too weak and therefore incapable of action, or too capable of action because they are too unstable, illustrating his own paranoia and weakness instead.

“‘That’s the meaning of the whole business. We’re not going to leave the island….None of us will ever leave….It’s the end, you see—the end of everything….’ He hesitated, then he said in a low, strange voice: ‘That’s peace—real peace. To come to the end—not to have to go on.…Yes, peace….’”

Characters like Emily Brent refuse to face the harsh reality of their crime, and those such as Lombard and General Macarthur know exactly what they have done. Unlike Lombard, General Macarthur feels immense guilt for his crime, so for him, death is a gift that will allow him to finally escape his own guilty conscience. His view ironically aligns with Justice Wargrave’s mission to deliver justice, as he craves his own ending, and reflects the theme of guilt’s effect on the conscience.

“‘Ah, I understand you now. Well, there is that Mr. Lombard. He admits to having abandoned twenty men to their deaths.’ Vera said, ‘They were only natives….’ Emily Brent said sharply, ‘Black or white, they are our brothers.’”

Emily Brent scolds Vera for dismissing the men Lombard left to die as “only natives,” as if that makes his crime less immoral. Emily’s impression that she is morally superior because she values people equally as their “brothers” is ironic when she tossed a young girl out on the street because she was pregnant out of wedlock, which went against Emily’s strict “moral” code.

“Mr. Justice Wargrave might have a good brain but he was an elderly man. At this juncture, Armstrong felt what was needed was a man of action.”

Dr. Armstrong’s opinion that Justice Wargrave is not a man of action is ironic considering that Wargrave is the murderer amongst them. Justice Wargrave may be elderly, but he is still very much a man of action as his elaborate murders can attest. However, no one on the island gives serious consideration to Justice Wargrave being Mr. Owen simply due to his age.

“Nevertheless I am strongly of the opinion that ‘Mr. Owen’ (to give him the name he himself has adopted) is on the island. Very much so. Given the scheme in question which is neither more nor less than the execution of justice upon certain individuals for offences which the law cannot touch, there is only one way in which that scheme could be accomplished. Mr. Owen could only come to the island in one way. It is perfectly clear. Mr. Owen is one of us.…”

As soon as the murders begin to occur, Justice Wargrave takes the lead and tells the group his “theory,” which of course, he already knows: Mr. Owen is one of them. This is a risky move because this automatically makes him one of the suspects. However, Justice Wargrave admits in his confession letter that as an “artist,” he wants validation, so it is possible that Justice Wargrave takes the lead because it allows him to showcase Mr. Owen‘s, or his, brilliance.

“Horrid whiney spoilt little brat! If it weren’t for him, Hugo would be rich…able to marry the girl he loved….Hugo…Surely—surely—Hugo was beside her? No, waiting for her in the room…”

Throughout the novel, Vera’s doesn’t seem capable of murder considering how shaken she is with each death when she is the most cold-blooded of them all. Her cruelty starts to bleed through when she thinks of Cyril, the child she intentionally let drown, as a “horrid whiney spoilt little brat.” Her guilt manifests in her hallucinations of Hugo, whom she frequently thinks is waiting for her in her room.

“Don’t you see? We’re the Zoo….Last night, we were hardly human anymore. We’re the Zoo.…”

A recurring symbol in the novel is animal imagery. Vera compares the remaining guests, including herself, Blore, Dr. Armstrong, and Lombard, to animals because their first and foremost priority at this point in the novel is to survive. They are being hunted by an unknown predator, and they are losing grip on their humanity in their desperation for survival.

“Vera thought, ‘Why did I never see his face properly before? A wolf—that’s what it is—a wolf’s face….Those horrible teeth….’”

In this final showdown between Vera and Lombard, Christie makes it intentionally unclear if Vera or Lombard is the killer, but Vera’s description of Lombard as wolf-like acts as a red herring. Christie often describes Lombard using wolf-like imagery throughout the novel, which may lead readers to believe that Lombard is Mr. Owen when it is Justice Wargrave.

“But side by side with this went a contradictory trait—a strong sense of justice. It is abhorrent to me that an innocent person or creature should suffer or die by any act of mine. I have always felt strongly that right should prevail.”

Justice is a major theme in the novel. Christie complicates the notion of justice by making the victims of Justice Wargrave’s crimes murderers themselves. In Justice Wargrave’s eyes, it is an act of justice to murder his victims because of the abhorrent crimes they have committed.

“I must—I must—I must—commit a murder! And what is more, it must be no ordinary murder! It must be a fantastical crime—something stupendous—out of the common! In that one respect, I have still, I think, an adolescent’s imagination. I wanted something theatrical, impossible! I wanted to kill….Yes, I wanted to kill….”

Justice Wargrave’s confession letter reveals a side of the judge readers have not seen before. Throughout the novel, Justice Wargrave is cold and reserved, but he seems reasonable. His confession at the end of the novel, however, reveals that he is in fact a sadist who takes great pleasure in murder and views it as an art form.