Analysis of the Elements of Plot in Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None.
ABSTRACT
Novel misteri pembunuhan adalah salah satu genre buku yang sangat digemari
oleh para pecinta karya sastra. Elemen yang sangat berpengaruh dalam novel misteri
pembunuhan adalah plot atau alur cerita yang terdiri dari beberapa elemen yaitu
suspense, surprise dan artistic unity. Suspense adalah suatu bagian dalam cerita yang
menyebabkan para pembaca bertanya-tanya sehingga ingin terus membaca cerita
tersebut sampai selesai. Surprise, adalah suatu bagian dalam cerita yang terjadi diluar
ekspetasi pembaca, sedangkan artistic unity merupakan elemen yang mengikat
suspense dan surprise agar tersusun sedemikian rupa sehingga alur cerita menjadi
masuk akal.
Salah satu penulis novel misteri pembunuhan yang sangat terkenal adalah
Agatha Christie; salah satu karya terbaiknya berjudul And Then There Were None.
Novel tersebut bercerita tentang delapan tamu dan dua orang pelayan yang diundang
ke sebuah pulau kemudian terbunuh satu per satu dan hal ini menghasilkan
ketegangan-ketegangan sepanjang cerita. Tulisan ini bertujuan mengkaji lebih dalam
setiap unsur atau elemen alur cerita yang ada di dalam novel tersebut untuk
membuktikan bahwa novel tersebut ditulis dengan baik dan layak untuk dibaca.
Maranatha Christian University
ii
Kata kunci: plot, suspense, surprise, artistic unity, Agatha Christie, And Then
There Were None.
Maranatha Christian University
iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS................................................................................... i
ABSTRACT ……………...………………………………………………….... ii
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
Background of the Study ……………………………………………….
Statement of the Problem ………………………………………………
Purpose of the Study ………………………………..…………………
Method of Research ……………………………………………………
Organization of the Thesis ……………………………………………..
1
3
3
3
4
CHAPTER TWO: ANALYSIS OF THE ELEMENTS OF PLOT
IN AGATHA CHRISTIE’S AND THEN THERE WERE NONE......
5
CHAPTER THREE: CONCLUSION.……….……………………………… 22
BIBLIOGRAPHY.……………………………………………………………. 26
APPENDICES
Synopsis of And Then There Were None ……………………………… 27
Biography of the Author ………………………………………………. 28
i
Maranatha Christian University
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Agatha Christie was and is still famous for her mystery and thriller novels
until today. She is the best-selling fiction author of all time in the Guinness Book
of Records (Geoghegan). Moreover, her books have been sold more than two
billion copies around the world. These facts make her the most widely read
novelist in history (Acocella). Agatha Christie’s contribution in the world of
literature has spanned more than 50 years. She wrote 80 novels and short story
collections. She also wrote a dozen plays including The Mousetrap, which is now
the longest continuously running play in theatrical history (“Agatha Christie”). All
these facts are proofs that make her works worth reading. Another thing that
makes Agatha Christie’s books worth reading and interesting is her style of
writing. “Christie's ability to combine period-specific subject matter with creative
plot structures, psychology, and careful story development, cements her place in
the canon of English popular literature” (Hepburn).
Maranatha Christian University
1
The novel that I choose to analyze in my thesis is one of the best works of
Agatha Christie, entitled And Then There Were None. The novel was originally
named Ten Little Niggers in 1939, but subsequently renamed Ten Little Indians as
the island described in the novel is also being renamed Indian island. The title was
later being changed again into And Then There Were None because the American
publishers rejected the previous title.
The novel tells a story about ten people who come to an island and get
killed one by one, which creates a building tension during the course of the story.
Christie has stated in her autobiography that this novel is “a better piece of
craftsmanship than anything else I have written" (“Ten Little Niggers, Ten Little
Indians, And Then There Were None”). She also stated that she wrote the novel
after tremendous amount of planning. She wanted the ten people to die without
the murders becoming ridiculous or being obvious. She said that this novel really
pleased her because “It was clear, straightforward, baffling, and yet had a
perfectly reasonable explanation; in fact, it had to have an epilogue in order to
explain it. It was well received and reviewed …” (“Ten Little Niggers, Ten Little
Indians, And Then There Were None”). All her statements above make the novel
more interesting and worth analyzing.
Since this novel is a murder mystery novel, the story depends largely on
the plot. That is why I choose to analyze the elements of plot in this novel by
using formalism. There are three elements in plot, namely suspense, surprise and
artistic unity. Suspense is the quality in the story that makes the readers ask
“What’s going to happen next?” or “How will this turn out?” and impels them to
read on to find the answers of these questions (Perrine 45). The second element of
Maranatha Christian University
2
plot is surprise, which is “proportional to the unexpectedness of what happens; it
becomes pronounced when the story departs radically from our expectation.”
(Perrine 47). The last element is the artistic unity which can be achieved when the
events in the novels are “placed in the most effective order, which is not
necessarily the chronological order, and, when rearranged in chronological order,
should make a logical progression” (Perrine 49). The story can be called plausible
and has a good artistic unity when the readers feel that “the plot has a quality of
inevitability, given a certain set of characters and an initial situation” (Perrine 49).
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
1.
What are the suspenses in the novel?
2.
What are the surprises in the novel?
3.
How is the artistic unity achieved in the novel?
PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
The purposes of the study are
1. to show the suspenses in the novel;
2. to show the surprises in the novel;
3. to show how the artistic unity is presented in the novel.
METHOD OF RESEARCH
I used library research in writing my thesis. First, I read Agatha Christie’s
And Then There Were None as a primary text. Then I searched for some
information from the Internet to support my analysis of the elements of plot in the
novel. In the end, I draw some conclusions.
Maranatha Christian University
3
ORGANIZATION OF THE THESIS
The thesis is organized into three chapters, which are preceded by the
Table of Contents and the Abstract. Chapter One contains the Background of the
Study, the Statement of the Problem, the Purpose of the Study, the Method of
Research, and the Organization of the Thesis. Chapter Two contains the analysis
of the elements of plot in Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. Chapter
Three is the Conclusion. The thesis ends with the Bibliography and the
Appendixes, which consist of the Synopsis of the Novel and the Biography of the
Author.
Maranatha Christian University
4
CHAPTER THREE
CONCLUSION
After analyzing the novel, I come to the conclusion that And Then There
Were None is an extraordinary mystery novel by Agatha Christie. The novel starts
with ten guests who are invited to an unpopulated island by a mysterious host
which is not there when they arrive. The mystery starts when suddenly there is a
recording which mentions each of the guests' crimes from the past and one by one
the guests are killed. The suspicion is directed to the mysterious host, Mr. Owen,
but when they find out that there is no one else on the island, they realize that the
murderer is one of them. The mystery is unsolved until all the guests die and a
confession letter of the murderer is found. The letter reveals all his plans and it
turns out that the murderer, Judge Lawrence Wargrave, is one of the guests.
Christie’s story is well-told and from the brief explanation above, it can be seen
that Christie has succeeded in keeping the tension until the very end of the story
when the real surprise is revealed.
There are many suspenses and surprises in the novel which are arranged in
such a way to build the tensions for the readers. It begins with the first suspense
Maranatha Christian University
22
when the readers start to wonder about the reason for the host to invite the ten
guests to the island. The suspense is answered directly with the first. It turns out
that they are all invited because they all have committed a crime in the past yet
they are not found guilty. This fact is stated in the recording which is suddenly
played after the first dinner in the house on the island.
The remaining guests start to wonder about the one who has invited them
to the island, Mr. Owen, and suspect him as the murderer and this becomes the
second suspense. But then, it is answered after they discuss and search for Mr.
Owen on the island. They do not find any one else on the island and conclude that
Mr. Owen is one of them. After the second suspense, the third suspense happens.
It is when suddenly two of the guests die in a short period of time. It does not look
like a murder so the reader at first wonder whether it is a coincidence or whether it
is a murder. However, the second surprise answers the suspense directly when
another guest is dead and from the way he dies it is clear that it is a murder.
From the last event above, the guests start to suspect one another and
wonder who the murderer is as the story continues and one by one the guest is
found dead. The repetition of the suspense is unavoidable because every time a
guest falls as a victim, the questions about who the murderer is among the
remaining guests and what his motives are keep occurring. That is why the fourth,
sixth, seventh, eleventh supenses share the same question. However, these five
suspenses are not answered directly until the end of the novel.
The fifth suspense happens when there is another guest who dies and the
remaining guests realize that the procedures of the murders have been designed
Maranatha Christian University
23
according to the nursery rhyme hanging in every bedroom. In this suspense, the
reader and also the remaining guests start to wonder about who is going to be the
next victim and whether it is true that the murder will happen according to the
nursery rhyme. This suspense is answered directly as the next event happens in
the novel. Miss Brent is the next victim and the way she dies is in accordance with
the nursery rhyme.
The tension keeps rising when one by one the guests are found dead and
the readers will become more curious about who the murderer is. Later, a guest,
Armstrong, is suddenly missing and the other guests start to suspect him as the
murderer. The readers will also agree that the missing Armstrong could be the
murderer in the eighth and ninth suspenses. However, the two remaining guests
find Armstrong's dead body. The last two guests start suspecting each other but
then they are all dead in the end and there is no clue about who the real murderer
is.
The epilogue of the novel is the murderer's confession letter and it reveals
the murderer’s motives, reasons, and plans in murdering all the guests. The
readers’ expectation is answered quite surprisingly because it turns out that the
real murderer, Judge Lawrence Wargrave, is one of the ten guests, who should
have died in the middle of the story. Yet, the letter explains how he managed to do
all his plans carefully and made all the murders possible to happen.
From the analysis above I can conclude that the events in And Then There
Were None are systematically arranged. The connection between each suspense
and surprise is acceptable and believable as each suspense is answered clearly by
Maranatha Christian University
24
the surprises, so that the events are artistically unified. Agatha Christie as the
author has succeeded in making the arrangements of events in the story to be an
extraordinary plot, which is very interesting for the readers. She managed to keep
the tension of the novel from the beginning to the end by making some of the
suspenses unanswered until the surprise is revealed at the end of the novel. The
fact that there is no detective in the story also strengthens the power of mystery in
the novel. The readers are forced to think by themselves about who the real
murderer is without any clue. They will keep on reading the novel until the end
for they want to know the answer to the miystery and Christie has succeeded in
building the tension while the readers are reading the novel. Hence, Agatha
Christie's And Then There Were None is well-written and it is a worth-reading
novel.
Maranatha Christian University
25
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Primary Source
Christie, Agatha. And Then There Were None. London: Harper Collins, 1993.
Print.
References
Acocella, Joan. “Queen of Crime.” The New Yorker. 2010. Web. 29 Apr. 2014.
“Agatha Christie.” Miss MARPLE. Web. 29 Apr. 2014.
“Agatha Christie Biography.” Biography Online. 2013. Web. 1 Apr. 2014.
Geoghegan, Tom. “The Mystery of Agatha Christie.” BBC News. 2005. Web. 30
Apr. 2014.
Hepburn, Evelyn. “The Writing Style of Agatha Christie.” Creative Writing
Software 101 . com. Web, 8 Sep. 2014.
Perrine, Laurence. Story and Structure. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
Inc., 1974. Print.
“Ten Little Niggers, Ten Little Indians, And Then There Were None.”
onyourmarks.org. 2004. Web. 1 May 2014.
Maranatha Christian University
26
Novel misteri pembunuhan adalah salah satu genre buku yang sangat digemari
oleh para pecinta karya sastra. Elemen yang sangat berpengaruh dalam novel misteri
pembunuhan adalah plot atau alur cerita yang terdiri dari beberapa elemen yaitu
suspense, surprise dan artistic unity. Suspense adalah suatu bagian dalam cerita yang
menyebabkan para pembaca bertanya-tanya sehingga ingin terus membaca cerita
tersebut sampai selesai. Surprise, adalah suatu bagian dalam cerita yang terjadi diluar
ekspetasi pembaca, sedangkan artistic unity merupakan elemen yang mengikat
suspense dan surprise agar tersusun sedemikian rupa sehingga alur cerita menjadi
masuk akal.
Salah satu penulis novel misteri pembunuhan yang sangat terkenal adalah
Agatha Christie; salah satu karya terbaiknya berjudul And Then There Were None.
Novel tersebut bercerita tentang delapan tamu dan dua orang pelayan yang diundang
ke sebuah pulau kemudian terbunuh satu per satu dan hal ini menghasilkan
ketegangan-ketegangan sepanjang cerita. Tulisan ini bertujuan mengkaji lebih dalam
setiap unsur atau elemen alur cerita yang ada di dalam novel tersebut untuk
membuktikan bahwa novel tersebut ditulis dengan baik dan layak untuk dibaca.
Maranatha Christian University
ii
Kata kunci: plot, suspense, surprise, artistic unity, Agatha Christie, And Then
There Were None.
Maranatha Christian University
iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS................................................................................... i
ABSTRACT ……………...………………………………………………….... ii
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
Background of the Study ……………………………………………….
Statement of the Problem ………………………………………………
Purpose of the Study ………………………………..…………………
Method of Research ……………………………………………………
Organization of the Thesis ……………………………………………..
1
3
3
3
4
CHAPTER TWO: ANALYSIS OF THE ELEMENTS OF PLOT
IN AGATHA CHRISTIE’S AND THEN THERE WERE NONE......
5
CHAPTER THREE: CONCLUSION.……….……………………………… 22
BIBLIOGRAPHY.……………………………………………………………. 26
APPENDICES
Synopsis of And Then There Were None ……………………………… 27
Biography of the Author ………………………………………………. 28
i
Maranatha Christian University
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Agatha Christie was and is still famous for her mystery and thriller novels
until today. She is the best-selling fiction author of all time in the Guinness Book
of Records (Geoghegan). Moreover, her books have been sold more than two
billion copies around the world. These facts make her the most widely read
novelist in history (Acocella). Agatha Christie’s contribution in the world of
literature has spanned more than 50 years. She wrote 80 novels and short story
collections. She also wrote a dozen plays including The Mousetrap, which is now
the longest continuously running play in theatrical history (“Agatha Christie”). All
these facts are proofs that make her works worth reading. Another thing that
makes Agatha Christie’s books worth reading and interesting is her style of
writing. “Christie's ability to combine period-specific subject matter with creative
plot structures, psychology, and careful story development, cements her place in
the canon of English popular literature” (Hepburn).
Maranatha Christian University
1
The novel that I choose to analyze in my thesis is one of the best works of
Agatha Christie, entitled And Then There Were None. The novel was originally
named Ten Little Niggers in 1939, but subsequently renamed Ten Little Indians as
the island described in the novel is also being renamed Indian island. The title was
later being changed again into And Then There Were None because the American
publishers rejected the previous title.
The novel tells a story about ten people who come to an island and get
killed one by one, which creates a building tension during the course of the story.
Christie has stated in her autobiography that this novel is “a better piece of
craftsmanship than anything else I have written" (“Ten Little Niggers, Ten Little
Indians, And Then There Were None”). She also stated that she wrote the novel
after tremendous amount of planning. She wanted the ten people to die without
the murders becoming ridiculous or being obvious. She said that this novel really
pleased her because “It was clear, straightforward, baffling, and yet had a
perfectly reasonable explanation; in fact, it had to have an epilogue in order to
explain it. It was well received and reviewed …” (“Ten Little Niggers, Ten Little
Indians, And Then There Were None”). All her statements above make the novel
more interesting and worth analyzing.
Since this novel is a murder mystery novel, the story depends largely on
the plot. That is why I choose to analyze the elements of plot in this novel by
using formalism. There are three elements in plot, namely suspense, surprise and
artistic unity. Suspense is the quality in the story that makes the readers ask
“What’s going to happen next?” or “How will this turn out?” and impels them to
read on to find the answers of these questions (Perrine 45). The second element of
Maranatha Christian University
2
plot is surprise, which is “proportional to the unexpectedness of what happens; it
becomes pronounced when the story departs radically from our expectation.”
(Perrine 47). The last element is the artistic unity which can be achieved when the
events in the novels are “placed in the most effective order, which is not
necessarily the chronological order, and, when rearranged in chronological order,
should make a logical progression” (Perrine 49). The story can be called plausible
and has a good artistic unity when the readers feel that “the plot has a quality of
inevitability, given a certain set of characters and an initial situation” (Perrine 49).
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
1.
What are the suspenses in the novel?
2.
What are the surprises in the novel?
3.
How is the artistic unity achieved in the novel?
PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
The purposes of the study are
1. to show the suspenses in the novel;
2. to show the surprises in the novel;
3. to show how the artistic unity is presented in the novel.
METHOD OF RESEARCH
I used library research in writing my thesis. First, I read Agatha Christie’s
And Then There Were None as a primary text. Then I searched for some
information from the Internet to support my analysis of the elements of plot in the
novel. In the end, I draw some conclusions.
Maranatha Christian University
3
ORGANIZATION OF THE THESIS
The thesis is organized into three chapters, which are preceded by the
Table of Contents and the Abstract. Chapter One contains the Background of the
Study, the Statement of the Problem, the Purpose of the Study, the Method of
Research, and the Organization of the Thesis. Chapter Two contains the analysis
of the elements of plot in Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. Chapter
Three is the Conclusion. The thesis ends with the Bibliography and the
Appendixes, which consist of the Synopsis of the Novel and the Biography of the
Author.
Maranatha Christian University
4
CHAPTER THREE
CONCLUSION
After analyzing the novel, I come to the conclusion that And Then There
Were None is an extraordinary mystery novel by Agatha Christie. The novel starts
with ten guests who are invited to an unpopulated island by a mysterious host
which is not there when they arrive. The mystery starts when suddenly there is a
recording which mentions each of the guests' crimes from the past and one by one
the guests are killed. The suspicion is directed to the mysterious host, Mr. Owen,
but when they find out that there is no one else on the island, they realize that the
murderer is one of them. The mystery is unsolved until all the guests die and a
confession letter of the murderer is found. The letter reveals all his plans and it
turns out that the murderer, Judge Lawrence Wargrave, is one of the guests.
Christie’s story is well-told and from the brief explanation above, it can be seen
that Christie has succeeded in keeping the tension until the very end of the story
when the real surprise is revealed.
There are many suspenses and surprises in the novel which are arranged in
such a way to build the tensions for the readers. It begins with the first suspense
Maranatha Christian University
22
when the readers start to wonder about the reason for the host to invite the ten
guests to the island. The suspense is answered directly with the first. It turns out
that they are all invited because they all have committed a crime in the past yet
they are not found guilty. This fact is stated in the recording which is suddenly
played after the first dinner in the house on the island.
The remaining guests start to wonder about the one who has invited them
to the island, Mr. Owen, and suspect him as the murderer and this becomes the
second suspense. But then, it is answered after they discuss and search for Mr.
Owen on the island. They do not find any one else on the island and conclude that
Mr. Owen is one of them. After the second suspense, the third suspense happens.
It is when suddenly two of the guests die in a short period of time. It does not look
like a murder so the reader at first wonder whether it is a coincidence or whether it
is a murder. However, the second surprise answers the suspense directly when
another guest is dead and from the way he dies it is clear that it is a murder.
From the last event above, the guests start to suspect one another and
wonder who the murderer is as the story continues and one by one the guest is
found dead. The repetition of the suspense is unavoidable because every time a
guest falls as a victim, the questions about who the murderer is among the
remaining guests and what his motives are keep occurring. That is why the fourth,
sixth, seventh, eleventh supenses share the same question. However, these five
suspenses are not answered directly until the end of the novel.
The fifth suspense happens when there is another guest who dies and the
remaining guests realize that the procedures of the murders have been designed
Maranatha Christian University
23
according to the nursery rhyme hanging in every bedroom. In this suspense, the
reader and also the remaining guests start to wonder about who is going to be the
next victim and whether it is true that the murder will happen according to the
nursery rhyme. This suspense is answered directly as the next event happens in
the novel. Miss Brent is the next victim and the way she dies is in accordance with
the nursery rhyme.
The tension keeps rising when one by one the guests are found dead and
the readers will become more curious about who the murderer is. Later, a guest,
Armstrong, is suddenly missing and the other guests start to suspect him as the
murderer. The readers will also agree that the missing Armstrong could be the
murderer in the eighth and ninth suspenses. However, the two remaining guests
find Armstrong's dead body. The last two guests start suspecting each other but
then they are all dead in the end and there is no clue about who the real murderer
is.
The epilogue of the novel is the murderer's confession letter and it reveals
the murderer’s motives, reasons, and plans in murdering all the guests. The
readers’ expectation is answered quite surprisingly because it turns out that the
real murderer, Judge Lawrence Wargrave, is one of the ten guests, who should
have died in the middle of the story. Yet, the letter explains how he managed to do
all his plans carefully and made all the murders possible to happen.
From the analysis above I can conclude that the events in And Then There
Were None are systematically arranged. The connection between each suspense
and surprise is acceptable and believable as each suspense is answered clearly by
Maranatha Christian University
24
the surprises, so that the events are artistically unified. Agatha Christie as the
author has succeeded in making the arrangements of events in the story to be an
extraordinary plot, which is very interesting for the readers. She managed to keep
the tension of the novel from the beginning to the end by making some of the
suspenses unanswered until the surprise is revealed at the end of the novel. The
fact that there is no detective in the story also strengthens the power of mystery in
the novel. The readers are forced to think by themselves about who the real
murderer is without any clue. They will keep on reading the novel until the end
for they want to know the answer to the miystery and Christie has succeeded in
building the tension while the readers are reading the novel. Hence, Agatha
Christie's And Then There Were None is well-written and it is a worth-reading
novel.
Maranatha Christian University
25
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Primary Source
Christie, Agatha. And Then There Were None. London: Harper Collins, 1993.
Print.
References
Acocella, Joan. “Queen of Crime.” The New Yorker. 2010. Web. 29 Apr. 2014.
“Agatha Christie.” Miss MARPLE. Web. 29 Apr. 2014.
“Agatha Christie Biography.” Biography Online. 2013. Web. 1 Apr. 2014.
Geoghegan, Tom. “The Mystery of Agatha Christie.” BBC News. 2005. Web. 30
Apr. 2014.
Hepburn, Evelyn. “The Writing Style of Agatha Christie.” Creative Writing
Software 101 . com. Web, 8 Sep. 2014.
Perrine, Laurence. Story and Structure. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
Inc., 1974. Print.
“Ten Little Niggers, Ten Little Indians, And Then There Were None.”
onyourmarks.org. 2004. Web. 1 May 2014.
Maranatha Christian University
26