Saturday, 5 January 2013

And Then There Were None/Ten Little Niggers


And Then There Were None

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other uses, see And Then There Were None (disambiguation).
And Then There Were None
And Then There Were None First Edition Cover 1939.jpg
Cover of first edition featuring the original title,Ten Little Niggers, which was changed in the US, and at a later date in the UK, due to the presence of the pejorative term
Author(s)Agatha Christie
Original titleTen Little Niggers
Cover artistStephen Bellman
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
Genre(s)Crime novel
PublisherCollins Crime Club
Publication date6 November 1939
Media typePrint (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages256 pp (first edition, hardback) 173 pp (latest edition, hardback)
ISBN978-0-00-713683-4
Preceded byThe Regatta Mystery
Followed bySad Cypress
And Then There Were None is a detective fiction novel by Agatha Christie, first published in the United Kingdom by the Collins Crime Club on 6 November 1939[1] as Ten Little Niggers. The title, which referred to a British nursery rhyme,[2][3] was changed to And Then There Were None for the first United States edition, and the name of the nursery rhyme was changed in the text to Ten Little Indians.[4] In the novel, ten people who had been complicit in the deaths of others but thus far escaped notice or punishment are tricked into coming to an island. Although they are the only people on the island, each guest is successively murdered in a manner paralleling the deaths enumerated in the nursery rhyme.
It is Christie's best-selling novel with 100 million sales to date, making it the world's best-selling mystery ever, and one of the best-selling books of all time (Publications International lists it as 7th best-selling).[5] The novel has been made into several films and adapted for radio.

Contents

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[edit]Plot summary

Ten people—Lawrence Wargrave, Vera Claythorne, Philip Lombard, General Macarthur, Emily Brent, Anthony "Tony" Marston, Dr. Armstrong, William Blore, and the servants Thomas and Ethel Rogers—have been invited to a mansion on the fictional Soldier Island ("Nigger Island" in the original 1939 UK publication, "Indian Island" in the 1964 U.S. publication), which is based upon Burgh Island off the coast of Devon.[6] Upon arriving, they are told that their hosts, a Mr and Mrs U.N. Owen (Ulick Norman Owen and Una Nancy Owen), are currently away, but the guests will be attended to by Mr. and Mrs. Rogers. Each guest finds in his or her room a framed copy of the nursery rhyme "Ten Little Soldiers" ("Niggers" or "Indians" in respective earlier editions) hanging on the wall.
The currently published, not the original, version of the rhyme is as follows:
Ten little Soldier Boys went out to dine;
One choked his little self and then there were nine.
Nine little Soldier Boys sat up very late;
One overslept himself and then there were eight.
Eight little Soldier Boys travelling in Devon;
One said he'd stay there and then there were seven.[7]
Seven little Soldier Boys chopping up sticks;
One chopped himself in halves and then there were six.
Six little Soldier Boys playing with a hive;
A bumblebee stung one and then there were five.
Five little Soldier Boys going in for law;
One got in Chancery and then there were four.
Four little Soldier Boys going out to sea;
A red herring swallowed one and then there were three.
Three little Soldier Boys walking in the zoo;
A big bear hugged one and then there were two.
Two little Soldier Boys sitting in the sun;
One got frizzled up and then there was one.[8]
One little Soldier Boy left all alone;
He went out and hanged himself and then there were none.
After dinner that evening, the guests notice ten soldier boy figurines on the dining room table. During coffee, a gramophone record, turned on unknowingly by Mrs. Rogers, plays, accusing each of the ten of murder. Each guest acknowledges awareness of (and in some cases involvement with) the deaths of the persons named (except Emily Brent, who tells only Vera, who later tells the other guests what happened), but denies any malice and/or legal culpability (except for Lombard and Blore, the latter telling only the former). The guests realize they have been tricked into coming to the island, each of them lured with something special to them, like a job opportunity or mention of a mutual acquaintance. Unfortunately, they soon find they cannot leave: the boat which regularly delivers supplies has stopped arriving because of the storm. They are murdered one by one, each death paralleling a verse of the nursery rhyme, with one of the figurines being removed after each murder.
The first to die is Anthony Marston, who chokes to death when his drink is poisoned with cyanide ("one choked his little self"). No one thinks much of this, although some people are suspicious. That night, Thomas Rogers notices that a figurine is missing from the dining table. Mrs. Rogers peacefully dies in her sleep that night, which Dr. Armstrong attributes to a dose of sleeping aid. ("one overslept himself"). Rogers reports another figurine gone. The guests become more on edge. General Macarthur fatalistically predicts that no one will leave the island alive, and at lunch, is indeed found dead from a blow to the back of his skull by a life preserver or something similar ("one said he'd stay there"). Finally, it is obvious that these three deaths have been murder. Meanwhile, a third figurine has disappeared from the dining room. In growing panic, Armstrong, Blore, and Lombard search the island in vain for the murderer. Justice Wargrave establishes himself as the decisive leader of the group and asserts one of them must be the murderer playing a sadistic game with the rest. The killer's twisted humor is evidenced by the names of their "hosts": "U.N. Owen" is a pun and a homophone for "unknown". The next morning, Rogers is missing, as is another figurine. He is found dead in the woodshed, struck in the back of the head with an axe ("one chopped himself in halves"). Later that day, Emily Brent is killed in the dining room by an injection ofpotassium cyanide that leaves a mark on her neck ("A bumblebee stung one"), which at first appears to be a sting from a bumble bee placed in the room. The hypodermic needle is found outside her window next to a smashed china figurine. The five remaining people, Armstrong, Wargrave, Lombard, Claythorne, and Blore, appear to become increasingly frightened and paranoid as the noose tightens, both psychologically and in reality.
Wargrave suggests they lock up any potential weapons, including Armstrong's medical equipment and the judge's own sleeping pills. Lombard admits to bringing a revolver to the island, but immediately discovers it has gone missing. Resolved to keep the killer from catching anyone alone, they gather in the drawing room and only leave one at a time. Vera goes up to her room and is frightened by a strand of seaweed hanging on a hook in her bedroom in the dark: an allusion to the boy the gramophone alleged that she had drowned. Her screams attract the attention of Blore, Lombard, and Armstrong, who rush to her aid. When they return to the drawing room, they find Wargrave in a mockery of a judicial wig and gown with a gunshot wound in his forehead ("one got into Chancery"). Armstrong confirms the death, and they lay Wargrave's body in his room and cover it with a sheet. Shortly afterward, Lombard discovers his revolver has been returned.
That night, Blore hears someone sneaking out of the house. He and Lombard investigate and, discovering Armstrong missing, assume the doctor is the killer and that he disappeared. In the morning, after eating breakfast, the remaining three decide to stay in the safe and entirely open space of the beach, trying to signal the mainland -- during this time, Blore returns to the house for food and does not return. Vera and Lombard soon discover his body right under a bedroom window on the terrace, his skull crushed by a bear-shaped clock ("a big bear hugged one"). At first, they continue to believe Armstrong is the killer until they find the doctor's body washed up between two rocks, drowned ("a red herring swallowed one"). Paranoid, each assumes the other is the murderer. In the brief but tense standoff that follows, Vera feigns compassion and gets Lombard to help her move Armstrong's body away from the water, using the opportunity to pick his revolver from his pocket. As Lombard, predicting that Vera is incapable of actually shooting him, rushes towards Vera, she kills Lombard with a shot through the heart on the beach ("one got frizzled up") and returns to the house. Dazed and disoriented, she finds a noose and chair waiting for her in her room. In an apparent trance, she hangs herself, kicking the chair out from underneath her, thus fulfilling the final verse of the rhyme ("he went and hanged himself, and then there were none").[9]

[edit]Epilogue

Inspector Maine, the detective in charge of the Soldier Island case, discusses the mystery with his Assistant Commissioner, Sir Thomas Legge, at Scotland Yard. There are no clues on the seaside town of Sticklehaven—Isaac Morris (mentioned to be responsible for crimes unprovable by the law), the man who arranged "U.N. Owen's" purchase of the island and sent the invitational letters, covered his tracks quite well, and was killed the day the party set sail. Times of death cannot be found by autopsies, and the police have failed to link the nursery rhyme to the deaths. According to Inspector Maine, Morris instructed the town not to take any notice for help -- but Fred Naracott, the man who ferried the guests to the island, overrode these orders and sent a boat to the island upon hearing of the SOS signals.
The guest diaries implicate that Marston, Mrs. Rogers, Macarthur, Rogers, Brent and Wargrave were the first six to die, but the police are unable to determine the order in which Blore, Lombard, Vera and Armstrong were killed. Armstrong's body was laid out above where any tide would've possibly taken it; Lombard was found on the beach, a large distance from where the revolver that shot him was found; the chair that Vera Claythorne kicked over to hang herself was found righted against the wall; and Blore couldn't have dropped the clock on himself. This means that of Blore, Lombard, Vera and Armstrong, someone was alive on the island after each of their deaths.
Inclement weather, combined with the fact that Fred Narracott (the man who ferried the guests to the island) sent a boat to the island as soon as weather allowed (sensing something to be amiss), would have prevented the murderer from leaving or arriving separately from the guests: he or she must have been among them. But since the first six murders at least appear to be accounted for, and since the other four victims cannot have been the last ones alive, the inspectors are ultimately left dumbfounded, asking themselves: "Who killed them?"

[edit]Postscript

A fishing trawler finds a letter in a bottle off the Devon coast; it contains the confession of the late Justice Wargrave. He reveals a lifelong sadistic temperament juxtaposed uneasily with a fierce sense of justice: he wanted to torture, terrify, and kill, but could never justify harming an innocent person. As a judge, he directed merciless jury instructions/summations and guilty verdicts, but solely in those cases in which he had satisfied himself of the guilt of the defendant(s), thrilling at the sight of the convicted person crippled with fear, facing their impending death. He also saved a few defendants from suffering punishment when he was convinced they were innocent of their accused crime. But the proxy of the bench was unsatisfying: Wargrave longed to commit murder by his own hand. Prompted to action by the discovery that he was terminally ill, he sought out those who had caused the deaths of others but managed to escape justice, finding nine (not including Isaac Morris), whom he lured to the island using his financial resources to investigate his victims' backgrounds to come up with plausible invitations from sources they trusted or from their acquaintances.
After the phonograph accusations were made the first night, he carefully watched, as he had in the courtroom for so many years, the reactions of his guests to the accusations. Seeing their fear or anxiety, he was certain of their guilt. He decided to start with the less serious offenders (i.e. Marston, whom Wargrave determined was "amoral" and had committed the crime by accident), and to save "the prolonged mental strain and fear" for the colder-blooded killers.
Wargrave arrived at the island with two drugs: potassium cyanide and chloral hydrate. After the gramophone recital, Wargrave slipped cyanide and chloral into the drinks of Marston and Mrs. Rogers respectively. Marston choked to death, and Mrs. Rogers was given another sleep medication, leading to death by overdose. The next day, after Macarthur made his fatalistic prediction, Wargrave sneaked up on him and killed him, although the specific weapon was never found or discussed. The next morning, he killed Rogers in the woodshed as he was cutting firewood. During breakfast, he slipped the rest of his chloral into Miss Brent's coffee to sedate her, and after she was abandoned at the table, Wargrave injected her with the rest of his cyanide using Armstrong's syringe.
Having disposed of his first five victims, the judge persuaded the trusting Armstrong to fake Wargrave's own death, "the red herring", under the pretext that it would rattle or unnerve the "real murderer." Since Armstrong was the only person who would closely examine the judge's body, as well as having done preliminary autopsies for the other victims up to that point, the ruse went undetected. That night, he met Armstrong on the cliffs, distracted him by pretending to see something and pushed him into the sea, knowing the doctor's disappearance would provoke the suspicions of the others. From Vera's room, Wargrave later pushed the stone bear-shaped clock onto Blore, crushing his skull. After watching Vera shoot Lombard, he then set up a noose and a chair in her bedroom in the belief that after having just killed Lombard, she was in a psychologically post-traumatic state and would hang herself under the right circumstances, i.e. a noose and chair waiting for her. He was right and watched (unseen in the shadows) as she hanged herself. Wargrave then pushed the chair she had stood on against the wall, wrote his missive/confession, put the letter in a bottle and tossed it out to sea. Wargrave admits to a "pitiful human" craving for recognition that he had not initially counted on. Even if his letter is not found, he believes there are three clues which implicate him, although he surmises (correctly) that the mystery will not have been solved:
  1. Wargrave was the only one invited to the island who had not wrongfully caused someone's death; initial public speculation around the time of the trial of Edward Seton, whom the gramophone accused Wargrave of murdering, notwithstanding. Seton was, in fact, guilty of the murder for which he had been convicted, and overwhelming proof emerged after Seton's death confirming this. (When questioned about the accusation made against him after the gramophone recital, Wargrave actually told the truth when he acknowledged that he "executed a guilty man"; but Wargrave told it in a rather unconvincing way, knowing that the other guests would not believe him and consider him an escapee of justice). Thus, ironically, the only innocent guest must be the murderer.
  2. The "red herring" line in the poem suggests that Armstrong was tricked into his death by someone he trusted. Of the remaining guests, Justice Wargrave is the one who would be far more likely than any of the others to inspire him with confidence.
  3. The red mark on Wargrave's forehead received from shooting himself is similar to the one God bestowed upon Cain as punishment for killing his brother Abel. He says the brand of Cain might lead the investigators to realize he was the murderer.
Wargrave describes how he planned to kill himself: he will loop an elastic cord through the gun, tying one end of the cord to his eyeglasses, and looping the other around the doorknob of an open door. He will then wrap a handkerchief around the handle of the gun and shoot himself in the head. His body will fall back as though laid there by the other guests whilst the gun's recoil will send it to the doorknob and out into the hallway, roughly where Vera dropped it while she walked to her room, detaching the cord and pulling the door closed. The cord will dangle innocuously from his glasses, and the stray handkerchief should not arouse suspicion, and Wargrave (correctly) predicts that times of death chronologically cannot be ordered by the time the bodies are examined. Thus the police will find ten dead bodies and an unsolvable mystery on Soldier Island.

[edit]Characters

The following details of the characters are based on the original novel. Adaptations have often varied with names and backgrounds, such as Judge Wargrave's surname changed, and Lombard accused of causing the death of his pregnant girlfriend.
  • Anthony James "Tony" Marston was a rich, spoiled, good-looking man with a well-proportioned body, crisp hair, tanned face and blue eyes known for his reckless driving. Mr. Owen accused Anthony of running over and killing two young children (John and Lucy Combes) while drunk, for which Marston felt no remorse. Marston was the first of Owen's victims, choking to death onpotassium cyanide slipped into his drink while Marston was gathered in the drawing room with the others.
  • Mrs. Ethel Rogers, the cook and Mr. Rogers's wife. She is described as a pale-faced, ghostlike woman with shifty light eyes, who appears to be afraid of something. Despite her respectability and efficiency, she assisted her domineering husband, Thomas, in killing their former employer, the elderly Miss Jennifer Brady, by withholding her medicine, in order to inherit money she had left them in her will. She was Owen's second victim, dying in her sleep from an overdose of chloral hydrate.
  • General John Gordon Macarthur, a retired World War I war hero, who sent his wife's lover (a younger officer named Arthur Richmond) to his death by assigning him to a mission where it was practically guaranteed he would die. Macarthur fatalistically accepts that no one will leave the island alive, which he tells Vera. Shortly thereafter, he becomes Owen's third victim, bludgeoned as he sat along the shore.
  • Thomas Rogers, the butler and Mrs. Rogers's husband. He and his weak-willed wife, whom he dominated, killed their former elderly employer by withholding her medicine, causing the elderly woman to die from heart failure, in order to inherit the money she had bequeathed them by her will. He was Owen's fourth victim, being struck in the head with an axe as he cut firewood in the woodshed.
  • Emily Caroline Brent, a rigid and repressed elderly woman of harsh moralistic principles who uses The Bible to justify her inability to show compassion or understanding for others. She firmly believes in racial equality, stating "Black or white, they are our brothers." She dismissed her maid, Beatrice Taylor, as punishment for becoming pregnant out of wedlock. As a result, Beatrice, who had also been rejected by her own family, drowned herself. Miss Brent refuses to discuss the matter with the gentlemen, stating "I have always followed the dictates of my conscience and have nothing with which to reproach myself." She later confides in Vera, the only other woman by that point. Vera then tells the other guests moments before Miss Brent is discovered dead. At first Miss Brent is sedated with chloral hydrate in her coffee, leaving her disoriented and open to attack. She is then injected with potassium cyanide via a hypodermic syringe in the neck (the "bee sting"). Though she presents herself as stern and unforgiving, as the novel progresses it is hinted that Miss Brent does, in fact, feel terrible guilt over her harsh treatment of the girl.
  • Dr. Edward George Armstrong, a Harley Street doctor, blamed for the death of a patient, Louisa Mary Clees, after he operated on her whilst drunk. Armstrong became Owen's seventh victim after being pushed off a cliff into the sea. His body goes missing for awhile, leading others to think he is the killer, but his corpse washes ashore at the end of the novel, leading to the climax.
  • William Henry Blore, a retired police inspector and now a private investigator, accused of having an innocent man, James Landor, sentenced to life imprisonment as a scapegoat after being bribed. The man died in prison a year later. He initially denies the accusation, but he later privately admits the truth to Lombard. Blore became Owen's eighth victim, having his skull crushed by a bear-shaped clock dropped from Vera's bedroom.
  • Philip Lombard, a soldier of fortune. Literally down to his last square meal, he comes to the island with a loaded revolver. Though he is reputed to be a good man in a tight spot, Lombard is accused of causing the deaths of a native East-African tribe when he stole food from the tribe, thus causing their starvation and subsequent death. Lombard is the only character to admit openly that the accusations against him are true, but feels no remorse for his actions. Though not an actual victim of Owen's, Lombard fulfilled the ninth referenced verse of the rhyme, shot to death on the beach by Vera, who at the time believed him to be the murderer.
  • Vera Elizabeth Claythorne, a young teacher, secretary, and ex-governess, who has taken mostly secretarial jobs since her last job as a governess ended in the death of her charge, Cyril Hamilton. She let young Cyril swim out to sea and drown so that his uncle, Hugo Hamilton, could inherit his money and marry her. However, the plan backfired, as Hugo abandoned her when he suspected what she had done. Of all the "guests," Vera is the one most tormented by latent guilt for her crime, yet is made to suffer the most, being the last survivor. After shooting Lombard in self-defense, she returns to the house, relieved and overjoyed that she has survived. When she goes into her room, she finds a readied noose, complete with chair beneath it, suspended from her ceiling. In a guilty and post-traumatic state, she climbs the chair, adjusts the noose round her neck, and kicks the chair away, fulfilling the rhyme's final verse as the tenth and final victim.
  • Justice Lawrence John Wargrave, a retired judge, well known as a "hanging judge" for liberally awarding the death penalty in different murder cases. He himself is suspected of murder because of his summation and jury directions during the trial of an accused murderer named Edward Seton, despite doubts about Seton's guilt during the trial. He is discovered in the end to be the murderer on the island. He fakes his own death with a "gunshot wound" on his forehead as the sixth victim with Armstrong's help. After Vera commits suicide, he does so as well in a manner to avert suspicion.
  • Sir Thomas Legge and Inspector Maine, two detectives who discuss the case in the epilogue of the book.
  • Isaac Morris, a man hired by Mr Owen who purchases the island, tells the townspeople to ignore distress signals for a week, arranges for Philip Lombard to come to the island armed, and meet Owen for a later payment of 100 guineas (105 GBP) to Lombard. In the book's postscript, the detectives discuss Morris' death, caused by a medication given to him by Mr. Owen, manipulating his hypochondriac personality, to help with his "gastric juices." He is Wargrave's tenth victim since it was Vera and not Wargrave who shot Lombard. Like all the guests on the island, Morris is responsible for someone's death. Through his narcotics dealings, he caused the addiction and subsequent suicide of a young woman, the daughter of one of Wargrave's friends.
  • Fred Narracott, the boatman who delivered the guests to the island. After doing so he does not appear again in the story, although Inspector Maine notes it was Narracott who, sensing something seriously amiss, returned to the island as soon as the weather allowed, before he was supposed to, and found the bodies.

[edit]Publication history

Cover of first US 1940 edition with the title currently used for all English-language versions.
The novel was originally published under the title Ten Little Niggers in 1939, retailing at seven shillings and sixpence[2]; the first U.S. edition, published byDodd, Mead and Company, was priced at two dollars.[4] [2][3] All references to "Indian" in the US version of the story were originally "Nigger": thus the island was called "Nigger Island" [3] rather than "Indian Island" and the rhyme found by each murder victim was also called Ten Little Niggers [3] rather than Ten Little Indians. Modern printings use the rhyme Ten Little Indians and "Indian Island" for reasons of political and ethnic sensitivity.
The UK serialisation was in twenty-three parts in the Daily Express from Tuesday, June 6 to Saturday, July 1, 1939. All of the installments carried an illustration by "Prescott" with the first installment having an illustration of Burgh Island in Devon which inspired the setting of the story. This version did not contain any chapter divisions.[10]
For the United States market, the novel was first serialised in the Saturday Evening Post in seven parts from 20 May (Volume 211, Number 47) to 1 July 1939 (Volume 212, Number 1) with illustrations by Henry Raleigh and then published separately in book form in January 1940. Both publications used the less offensive title And Then There Were None. The 1945 motion picture also used this title. In 1946, the play was published under the new title Ten Little Indians (the same title under which it had been performed on Broadway), and in 1964 an American paperback edition also used this title.
British editions continued to use the work's original title until the 1980s and the first British edition to use the alternative title And Then There Were Noneappeared in 1985 with a reprint of the 1963 Fontana Paperback.[11] Today And Then There Were None is the title most commonly used.[citation needed] The original title survives in many foreign-language versions of the novel: for example, the Spanish title is "Diez negritos", the Greek title is Δέκα Μικροί Νέγροι, the Bulgarian title is Десет малки негърчета, the Serbian title is Deset malih crnaca, the Romanian title is Zece negri mititei,[12] the French title is Dix petits nègres[13] and the Hungarian title is Tíz kicsi néger, while the Italian title, Dieci piccoli indiani, mirrors the "Indians" title. The Dutch 18th edition of 1994 still used the work's original English title Ten Little Niggers. The 1987 Russian film adaptation has the title Десять негритят (Desyat Negrityat). In 1999, the Slovak National Theatre showed the play under its original title but then changed the name to A napokon nezostal už nik (And Then There Were None) mid-run.[14] The computer adventure game based on the novel uses "Ten Little Sailor Boys".
  • Christie, Agatha (November 1939). Ten Little Niggers. London: Collins Crime Club. OCLC 152375426. Hardback, 256 pp. (First edition)
  • Christie, Agatha (January 1940). And Then There Were None. New York: Dodd, Mead. OCLC 1824276. Hardback, 264 pp. (First US edition)
  • 1944, Pocket Books, 1944, Paperback, 173 pp (Pocket number 261)
  • 1947, Pan Books, 1947, Paperback, 190 pp (Pan number 4)
  • 1958, Penguin Books, 1958, Paperback, 201 pp (Penguin number 1256)
  • Christie, Agatha (1963). And Then There Were None. London: Fontana. OCLC 12503435. Paperback, 190 pp. (The 1985 reprint was the first UK publication of novel under title And Then There Were None).[15]
  • Christie, Agatha (1964). Ten Little Indians. New York: Pocket Books. OCLC 29462459. (first publication of novel as Ten Little Indians)
  • 1964, Washington Square Press (paperback – teacher's edition)
  • Christie, Agatha (1977). Ten Little Niggers (Greenway edition ed.). London: Collins Crime Club. ISBN 0-00-231835-0. Collected works, Hardback, 252 pp (Except for reprints of the 1963 Fontana paperback, this was one of the last English-language publications of the novel under the title "Ten Little Niggers")[16]
  • Christie, Agatha (1980). The Mysterious Affair at Styles; Ten Little Niggers; Dumb Witness. Sydney: Lansdowne Press. ISBN 0-7018-1453-5. Late use of the original title in an Australian edition.
  • Christie, Agatha; N J Robat (trans.) (1981) (in Dutch). Ten Little Niggers (Third edition ed.). Culemborg: Educaboek. ISBN 90-11-85153-6. (Late printing of Dutch translation preserving original English title)
  • Christie, Agatha (1986). Ten Little Indians. New York: Pocket Books. ISBN 0-671-55222-8. (Last publication of novel under the title "Ten Little Indians")

[edit]Literary significance and reception

And Then There Were None is one of Agatha Christie's best-known mysteries. Writing for The Times Literary Supplement of 11 November 1939, Maurice Percy Ashley stated, "If her latest story has scarcely any detection in it there is no scarcity of murders." He continued, "There is a certain feeling of monotony inescapable in the regularity of the deaths which is better suited to a serialized newspaper story than a full-length novel. Yet there is an ingenious problem to solve in naming the murderer. It will be an extremely astute reader who guesses correctly."[17] Many other reviews were complimentary; in The New York Times Book Review of 25 February 1940, Isaac Anderson detailed the set-up of the plot up to the point where "the voice" accuses the ten "guests" of their past crimes or sins, which have all resulted in the deaths of other human beings, and then said, "When you read what happens after that you will not believe it, but you will keep on reading, and as one incredible event is followed by another even more incredible you will still keep on reading. The whole thing is utterly impossible and utterly fascinating. It is the most baffling mystery that Agatha Christie has ever written, and if any other writer has ever surpassed it for sheer puzzlement the name escapes our memory. We are referring, of course, to mysteries that have logical explanations, as this one has. It is a tall story, to be sure, but it could have happened."[18]
Such was the quality of Christie's work on this book that many compared it to her 1926 novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. For instance, an unnamed reviewer in the Toronto Daily Star of 16 March 1940 said, "Others have written better mysteries than Agatha Christie, but no one can touch her for ingenious plot and surprise ending. With And Then There Were None... she is at her most ingenious and most surprising... is, indeed, considerably above the standard of her last few works and close to the Roger Ackroyd level."[19]
Other critics laud the use of plot twists and surprise endings. Maurice Richardson wrote a rhapsodic review in The Observer's issue of 5 November 1939 which began, "No wonder Agatha Christie's latest has sent her publishers into a vatic trance. We will refrain, however, from any invidious comparisons with Roger Ackroyd and be content with saying that Ten Little Niggers is one of the very best, most genuinely bewildering Christies yet written. We will also have to refrain from reviewing it thoroughly, as it is so full of shocks that even the mildest revelation would spoil some surprise from somebody, and I am sure that you would rather have your entertainment kept fresh than criticism pure." After stating the set-up of the plot, Richardson concluded, "Story telling and characterisation are right at the top of Mrs. Christie's baleful form. Her plot may be highly artificial, but it is neat, brilliantly cunning, soundly constructed, and free from any of those red-herring false trails which sometimes disfigure her work." [1]
Robert Barnard, a recent critic, concurred with the reviews, describing the book as "Suspenseful and menacing detective-story-cum-thriller. The closed setting with the succession of deaths is here taken to its logical conclusion, and the dangers of ludicrousness and sheer reader-disbelief are skillfully avoided. Probably the best-known Christie, and justifiably among the most popular."[20]
The original name of the mystery [Ten Little Niggers] has long been abandoned as offensive, and on grounds of political correctness. (The use of the term caused damage to the National Health Service (NHS) career of a British nursing administrator, Pat Bottrill.) Some critics claim Christie's original title and the setting on "Nigger Island" [later changed to "Indian Island", for the reasons stated above] are integral to the work. These aspects of the novel, argues Alison Light, "could be relied upon automatically to conjure up a thrilling 'otherness', a place where revelations about the 'dark side' of the English would be appropriate."[21] Unlike novels such as Heart of Darkness, "Christie's location is both more domesticated and privatised, taking for granted the construction of racial fears woven into psychic life as early as the nursery. If her story suggests how easy it is to play upon such fears, it is also a reminder of how intimately tied they are to sources of pleasure and enjoyment."[21]

[edit]Adaptations

And Then There Were None has had more adaptations than any other single work of Agatha Christie. They often used Christie's alternative ending from her 1943 stage play, with the setting often being changed to locations other than an island.

[edit]Stage

In 1943, Agatha Christie adapted the story for the stage. In the process of doing so, she and the producers agreed that audiences might not flock to such a grim tale and it would not work well dramatically as there would be no one left to tell the tale. Thus, she reworked the ending for Lombard and Vera to be innocent of the crimes of which they were accused, survive, and fall in love with each other. Some of the names were also changed with General Macarthur becoming General McKenzie, perhaps because of the real-life General Douglas MacArthur playing a prominent role in the ongoing World War II. On 14 October 2005, a new version of the play, written by Kevin Elyot and directed by Steven Pimlott, opened at the Gielgud Theatre in London. For this version, Elyot returned to the book version of the story and restored the original ending where Lombard is killed and Vera commits suicide.

[edit]Film

There have been several film adaptations of the novel. The first was adapted for the cinema screen in René Clair's successful 1945 US production. The second cinema adaptation of the book was directed by George Pollock in 1965; Pollock had previously handled the four Miss Marple films starring Margaret Rutherford. This film transferred the setting from a remote island to a mountain retreat in Austria. Another variant of And Then There Were None made in 1974 was the first colour English-language film version of the novel, directed by Peter Collinson from a screenplay by Peter Welbeck (who co-wrote the screenplay for the 1965 film). This version was set at a grand hotel in the Iranian desert. A version from the USSR, Desyat' negrityat (Десять негритят "Ten Little Negroes") (1987) was written and directed by Stanislav Govorukhin and is the only cinema adaptation to use the novel's original ending. The most recent film, Ten Little Indians, directed byAlan Birkinshaw, was made in 1989 and is set on safari in the African savannah. The uncredited Hindi film adaptation Gumnaam (1965) adds the characteristic "Bollywood" elements of comedy, music and dance to Christie's plot. Spoofs of the narrative have included Murder by Death (starring Alec Guinness and Truman Capote, among others).

[edit]Television

Several variations of the original novel were adapted for television. For instance, there were two different British adaptions, the BBC adaption in 1949 and ITV adaptation in 1959. In addition, there was an American version, Ten Little Indians, directed by Paul Bogart, Philip F. Falcone, Leo Farrenkopf and Dan Zampino with the screenplay by Philip H. Reisman Jr., that was a truncated TV adaptation of the play. A West German adaptation Zehn kleine Negerlein was directed by Hans Quest for ZDF in 1969. A year later in 1970, Pierre Sabbagh directed Dix petits nègres for the French television adaption. In Cuba, the novel was adapted in 1981 in a black and white six parts series starring Yolanda Ruiz as Vera Claythorne, Miguel Navarro as Philip Lombard and Fernando Robles as Lawrence Wargrave.
A Lebanese version also appeared in 1974 under the title 10 Little Niggers.
The CBS television show Harper's Island is loosely based on the book, however, it is set over 13 weeks, instead of the 1 or 2 in the original, there are 25 characters instead of 10, and there are survivors left at the end.
The title of the Family Guy episode "And Then There Were Fewer" is a copied version of the book title.

[edit]Radio

On 13 November 2010, as part of its Saturday Play series, BBC Radio 4 broadcast a ninety-minute adaptation written by Joy Wilkinson. The production was directed by Mary Peate and featured, among others, Geoffrey Whitehead as Justice Wargrave, Lyndsey Marshal as Vera Claythorne, Alex Wyndham as Captain Lombard, John Rowe as General Armstrong, and Joanna Monro as Emily Brent. In this production, which is extremely faithful to the novel, the rhyme is "Ten Little Soldier Boys". In Cuba, the novel was adapted in the 1970s to the long-running episodes program "8:30 Key" with a big success starring now-deceased actors as Angel Espasande and Parmenia Silva.[citation needed]

[edit]Other media

In 2005, The Adventure Company released the video game Agatha Christie: And Then There Were None, the first in a series of PC games based on Christie novels. In February 2008, it was ported to the Wii console. The identity of the murderer is not that of the killer in the original book.
And Then There Were None was released by HarperCollins as a graphic novel adaptation on 30 April 2009, adapted by François Rivière and illustrated by Frank Leclercq.

[edit]Related works

The K.B.S. Productions Inc. film, A Study in Scarlet (1933), predates the publication of Ten Little Indians and follows a strikingly similar plot.[22] Though it is a Sherlock Holmes movie, the movie bears no resemblance to Arthur Conan Doyle's original story of the same name. In this case, the rhyme refers to "Ten Little Fat Boys". The author of the movie's screenplay, Robert Florey, "doubted that [Christie] had seen A Study in Scarlet but he regarded it as a compliment if it had helped inspire her".[23]
The 1934 film The Ninth Guest, the adaptation of the book The Invisible Host, follows a similar plot while predating Christie's book by almost a decade. Guests are invited to a party by a mysterious, unseen host, and are gradually killed off for their perceived crimes.
Several parodies have been made. As early as autumn 1942, "World's Finest Comics" (#7, Fall Issue) had a Superman story by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster called "The Eight Doomed Men" which used Christie's basic structure and even borrowed a number of her victim's backgrounds, although Superman intervened to rescue half of the intended victims and the killer's motivation was changed to specific revenge. Siegel and Shuster anticipated the 1966 film by moving the locale to a mountain cabin and tossed in a Zeppelin-like dirigible - one location not yet used in adaptations of the story. Another parody, the 1976 Broadway musical Something's Afoot, stars Tessie O'Shea as a female sleuth resembling Christie's fictional Miss Marple. Something's Afoot takes place in a remote English estate, where six guests have been invited for the weekend. The guests, as well as three servants and a young man who claims to have wandered innocently onto the estate, are then murdered one by one, several in full view of the audience, with the murderer's surprise identity revealed at the end. For an encore, the murdered cast members perform a song, "I Owe It All to Agatha Christie".
The 1986 slasher film April Fool's Day is a direct descendant of the work, involving a group of college friends who are killed off one by one when they are invited to spend the weekend in a large house located on a private island.
In television, the story was spoofed in the 1966 Get Smart episode "Hoo Done It", which featured guest star Joey Forman as detective Harry Hoo, a parody of Charlie Chan. An episode of Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends titled "7 Little Superheroes" is, being a children's show, a murder-free adaptation of the story. The Family Guy episode "And Then There Were Fewer", the Remington Steele episode "Steele Trap" and The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. episode "Bounty Hunters Convention" were other television episodes inspired by the story.
In the 1967 The Avengers adaption "The Superlative Seven"[24] John Steed is invited to a costume party aboard a chartered airplane. The airplane is being flown by remote control. Steed and the six other fancy-dressed guests, who are specialists in various combat styles, eventually land on a deserted island where they are informed that one of them is a trained assassin trying to kill them all. The villain is played by Donald Sutherland. Once the first murder is committed, Sutherland's client comments, "And then there were six".
The plot of Anthony Horowitz's novel I Know What You Did Last Wednesday is similar to that of And Then There Were None.

[edit]International titles

  • Arabic: "ثم لم يبق منهم أحد" (And Then There Were None)
  • Basque: Eta ez zen alerik ere geratu (And Then There Were None)
  • Catalan: Deu negrets (Ten Little Negros)
  • Czech: Deset malých černoušků (Ten Little Negros)
  • Danish: En af os er morderen (One of Us is the Killer)
  • Dutch: Tien kleine negertjes (Ten Little Negros)
  • Estonian: Kümme väikest neegrit (1994 edition), Ja ei jäänud teda ka (2008 edition)
  • Finnish: Eikä yksikään pelastunut (year 1940, And none was saved); Kymmenen pientä neekeripoikaa (year 1968, Ten little negro boys); year 2003 back to original name
  • French: Dix Petits Nègres (Ten Little Negros)
  • Galician: "Dez negriños" (Ten Little Negros)
  • German: Und dann gabs keines mehr (And Then There Were None) (since 2003), 1982 changed into: Zehn kleine Negerlein (Ten Little Negros), first edition in 1944: Letztes Weekend (Last Weekend)
  • Greek: Δέκα μικροί νέγροι(Ten little Niggers)
  • Hebrew: עשרה כושים קטנים (Ten little negros)
  • Hungarian: Tíz kicsi néger (Ten Little Negros)
  • Indonesian: Sepuluh Anak Negro (Ten Little Niggers)
  • Italian: Dieci piccoli indiani (Ten Little Indians)
  • Japanese: そして誰もいなくなった (And Then There Were None)
  • Korean: 그리고 아무도 없었다 (And Then There Were None)
  • Latvian: Desmit mazi nēģerēni (Ten Little Niggers)
  • Malayalam: Oduvil Aarum Avasheshichilla (No one survived in the end)
  • Malaysian: Sepuluh Budak Hitam
  • Norwegian.: Ti små negerbarn (Ten Little Negro children)
  • Persian: "ده بچه زنگی" (Ten Negro children)
  • Polish: I nie było już nikogo (And Then There Were None), previously Dziesięciu Murzynków (Ten Little Negros)
  • Portuguese (European): As Dez Figuras Negras (Ten Black Figures)
  • Portuguese (Brazilian): E não sobrou nenhum (And Then There Were None), previously O Caso dos Dez Negrinhos (The Case of the Ten Little Negros)
  • Romanian: Zece negri mititei (Ten Little Negros)
  • Russian: Десять негритят (Ten Little Negros)
  • Serbian: Десет Малих Црнаца (Ten Little Negroes)
  • Spanish: Diez Negritos (Ten Little Negros)
  • Swedish: Och så var de bara en (And Then There Where None), previously Tio små negerpojkar (Ten Little Negro Boys)
  • Tamil: "Piragu angu oruvar kooda illai" (And then there were none)
  • Turkish: On Küçük Zenci (Ten Little Negros)
  • Chinese: "无人生还" （And Then There Were None）

[edit]See also

Portal iconNovels portal
Film,television & game adaptations

[edit]Television tributes

CSI:Crime Scene Investigation based an episode of the show's second season under the same name focusing on a gang of armed robbers stealing from casinos outside the Las Vegas metropolitan area with each criminal killing a member of the gang to keep more of the proceeds.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_Then_There_Were_None
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