Contents
Acknowledgements………3
Introduction………4
Chapter 1: The evil in detective novels and its development ………5
Chapter 2: The detective novel of Agatha Christie: an approach to her work and how evil is presented………...22
Chapter 3: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd……….28
Chapter 4: And Then There Were None (Ten Little Negros) ………...39
Chapter 5: The Seven Dials Mystery……….48
Epilogue……….………52
Bibliography………...………..……….55
Acknowledgements
I feel the need to thank my supervisor Dr Newton, for the supervision and the help he gave me and for being the inspiration behind my thesis. Special thanks also to Dr Van Leeuwen who will be the second reader of this paper, and for his contribution to making me love the field of Gothic fiction so much. In addition, I would also like to express my gratitude to my parents and my sister for their understanding and their tolerance all this time. The biggest gratitude goes to my beloved friends who gave me their unconditional support, love and strength to continue being motivated and who remained patient with all my stress and
sometimes expression of anger towards them. Especially my very good friend Tasos deserves the biggest thanks for his patience and help to finish this paper. I would not be able to do this alone. Finally, I hope this thesis, except of being the closure to this circle of studies, to be the reason in order to continue my research in such topics and of course to be a pleasant journey in the world of the detective fiction for anyone who will read it.
Introduction
“Whoever fights a monster should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you” (Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil)
Detective novels necessarily depend upon the presence of evil, transgression and crime. This thesis examines the presence of such dark forces in the popular literary form of the detective story, as practiced by one of its greatest exemplars, Agatha Christie. It particularly examines the relation between the rational and the irrational elements in Christie's texts. On the one hand, when it comes to detective fiction there is the need for logical thinking in order to solve the mystery, and on the other there is the violence and the challenge to social, moral and legal norms that bring that mystery into being. My aim as a researcher is to occupy the My aim as a researcher is to occupy the position of the detective who combines rational logic with intuition in order to search the truth.
The thesis examines the figure of the detective, one arguably more dangerous and scary than the killers which she tries to catch, and who unites the cozy safety of rational
understanding with an intelligence that is unsettlingly perceptive.
In this research I will try to explore how the concept of evil is used and presented in crime fiction and especially in Agatha Christie's work. I argue that Christie transforms murders into a work of art or as Thomas De Quincey puts it better, into aesthetic events.
My methodology will be drawn on the traditions of close reading and discussions of the poetics of the detective novel, but I will also use some psychoanalytical sources in order to explain the mentality of the characters that Christie is using.
In addition, I will also make an attempt to put the origins of detective literature into historical and cultural context. Following W. H. Auden and Tzvetan Todorov's influential
critical accounts, I offer a reading of the structure of detective fiction, as it first emerged in the writings of Edgar Allan Poe. I will provide a taxonomy of various kinds of detective novels in the 20th century, to explore the function of suspense, and the relation of the detective fiction genre to ideas of evil and tragedy.
The main part of the research will examine the function of evil in the work of Agatha Christie, and especially in three of her most well-known and successful novels: that is, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926); And Then There Were None (1939); and The Seven Dials Mystery (1929). These texts are selected on the basis of their immense popularity, and also their centrality to critical discussion of Christie's work. Using them as my examples, I shall define the images of evil which are repeated in her novels. I take 'evil' to mean, in simple terms, acts of hostility, violence or cruelty against individual people, society in general, or against God. Evil is connected with those characters who selfishly assault the rights of others freely to exist; in Agatha Christie's books this attack on the others is mostly represented through murder.
Moreover, I will analyze the structure, the plot, and the characters that Agatha Christie creates, as well as the techniques with which she presents the dual structure.
Finally, this thesis argues that the vivifying element in Agatha Christie’s work emerges from the conflict between rationality and evil. She is trapped in a battle between literary form and formality and the chaos that bursts from the crimes she describes. Christie’s work masters this tension between literature and the violence of the real world. It is this conflict to which thesis wants to bear witness.
CHAPTER 1
The evil in detective novels and its development
1.1 Romantic Impulse and Enlightenment Rationalism
The first section of the thesis sets out to argue that the structure of detective fiction
reproduces a post-Enlightenment tension between passion and control, violence and order, impulse and restraint.
Detective fiction embodies within itself these opposing forces, and acts in cultural terms as a literary site where such opposites might be reconciled. I shall begin by tracing in general terms the fiction between those opposing elements, as they have been understood, by literary historians to operate in the contrast between eighteenth-century classicism and early
nineteenth-century Romanticism, as I would argue that detective fiction encapsulates the tension between the Enlightenment and Romanticism.
As a literary form, romanticism appears in Europe around the end of the 18th and the beginning of 19th century.1 Along with the gothic novel, it was one form of reaction to what
has been seen as the rationalism of the Enlightenment.
In literature, the neoclassicismof the 18th century represented the cultural hegemony of Greek and Roman literary models, 2c whereas romantic literature was a form of reaction to
the strict rules that neoclassicism imposed and was more interested in national medieval forms, such as romance (as exemplified by Sir Edmund Spenser) and the ballad, as well as
1 Chronically it lasts from 1790 until 1850. Lilian Furst, Romanticism in Perspective: A Comparative Study of Aspects of Romantic Movements in England, France and Germany, Humanities Press, 1970,
2 ‘A group of recent art critics, including Hugh Honour, Robert Rosenblum, and Lorenz
Eitner, have defined with a new clarity the artistic movement they call Neoclassicism, which began in the middle of the eighteenth century and thus preceded the American and French revolutions.[...] Neoclassicism initiates the rejection of previous values, the intellectual and artistic aggression, that for one and a half centuries has been attributed to Romanticism. […] Neoclassicism is mimetic; it is hostile to external authority, and acknowledges no imperatives other than truth to the artist's experiences (Marilyn Butler, Romantics, Rebels And
Reactionaries: English Literature And Its Background 1760-1830, New York, Oxford University Press, 1981), p. 6.
the fantasies of the 1001 Nights and by the example of the supposedly 'irregular' genius of Shakespeare. The values which gave shape and direction to the Enlightenment were the values of Greek and Roman culture, with classic structures, and rules. As aesthetic objects were praised for harmony, so the texts had to aim at uniformity, order and correct structures.
The purpose of written discourse was not merely to entertain, but to teach morality and to cultivate logic. With Romanticism however, the tendency to return to classicism was replaced by the return to the values and the forms of Middle Ages, and the love for
Shakespeare replaced the one for Homer. Texts were praised for ornateness of style and for imaginative freedom.
Romanticism as expressive principle comes to overturn the perception that humanity had about the world, the object, the relation with nature, God, good and evil:
“The metaphysical element and the sovereignty of the imagination were characteristics of a time when rationalism had not just overcome but also condemned them as retrogressive residues” (Elena Maria Emandi, p.188). So, after romanticism, irrational motivations, dreams, and an unfettered imagination became common tools.
Moreover, romanticism brings into the foreground the consciousness of individual freedom, a fact which changes the aesthetics and also the ethics of literature.
Romanticism renewed the area of aesthetics, using as its main tool imagination. This revolutionized the way that images are created in literature: “Since the Renaissance till the end of classicism, the theory of literature was based on the Poetics of Aristotle” (Rozanis p.47), with the main criterion being the imitation (μίμησιν), the representation of reality. Now the emphasis fell on the expression and not on its imitation. The writer creates
his own reality, expresses his psychic world, is a creator, enjoying the possibilities created by his freedom. As has been argued above, in detective novels these two tendencies merge. The stories are both 'classical' in their commitment to form, pattern, and convention, but they place against that order individuals and deeds that suggest the freedom to create art by describing violent crimes and monstrous murderers. They assume the freedom to shock the audience with their stories and to cross the limits of what is appropriate to be represented in literature. Classical literature had, of course, also been interested in violence and
transgression; it was indeed, following Lessing's account of the Laocoon, one of the tenets of pre-Romantic criticism that the art of the Greeks had not been sane, rational and calm, but was – like the Romantic writers – interested in the chaotic, the tumultuous and the violent. As we read in Lessing's essay: Laocoon: An Essay Upon the Limits of Painting and
Poetry, Laocoon supports the idea that: “The more nearly the actor approaches nature, the more sensibly must our eyes and ears be offended, as in nature they undoubtedly are when we hear such loud and violent expressions of pain. Besides, physical suffering in general possesses in a less degree than other evils the power of arousing sympathy” (Lessing, p. 22). The sympathy towards the characters and originality of the pain and violence makes the readers more excited about the plot of the story.
Romanticism not only brought changes in art and the way of writing, but at the same time introduced an aesthetic view, by bringing in literature individuality, imagination, emotions, and original intelligence instead of the ideal of beauty and the home and family values that existed before (Furst p. 46). The subject changes and is focusing more on individual
freedom, emotion, and sentiment instead of rational thinking. Romanticism prefers sentiment to the neoclassical aesthetic.
Fred Botting asserts that in art until the late 18th century the rules according to
neoclassicism exclusively dominated, while gothic expressed an affinity for objects or practices or that were negative, unreasonable, immoral and imaginary (Botting, p. 2).
We could see the gothic novel as a protest against the aesthetic (and ethical) conservatism of the 18th century and as a form of visualization of its troubled time. In this regard, detective fiction is productively dual – both conservative (in its commitment to convention and its assertion of justice) and subversive (in its recourse to mayhem and its fascination with evil). It draws political forces that led to Gothic.
For Gothic literature is not just a patchwork of preromantic trends, but a deep reflection of the revolutionary time in which it is created. Beyond the spiritual artistic contrast of
romanticism with the Enlightenment, the time from the mid-18th century until the beginning of the 19th century, is a period of socio-political and ideological reclassifications but also a period of cultural changes. The prime of the gothic novel coincided with deep socio- political changes around Europe. While describing the writers of those times as awkward
and desperate when faced by the social chaos, Devendra P. Varna says: “Interpreted in its social Europe in revolutionary ferment” (216). As argued in David Punter's book, A Companion to Gothic (2000): “The political, social, cultural, and religious anxieties of the eighteenth century were felt Europe-wide (indeed, northern hemisphere wide) and paraded themselves across the entire continent more or less simultaneously. […] The Gothic genre, was 'the inevitable product of the revolutionary shocks with which the whole of Europe resounded' (Sade, quoted in Mulvey-Roberts,1998, 204)” (Punter, p. 38).
Likewise, detective fiction of the so-called 'Golden Age', the inter-war years, provided complex entertainment at the time between the carnage of the First World War and the beginning of the Second World War. The form bore witness to the social upheaval of this period, with the rise of fascism, the impact of economic crises, and shifts in the social and political position of women.
The aesthetic tension of Gothic entered into detective fiction via the influence of Poe, Charles Dickens, and Willkie Collins, popular writers who married the use of uncanny and the Gothic with the first English-language attempts at the writing of detective fiction. From here, at the end of the century, 'the loss of confidence and dramatic dislocations attendant upon the calamity of the World War I led to another step in the evolution of
supernatural fiction” (Hughes & Punter, p. 663). The old traditional forms of gothic which tried to present the values of home and family, and had a more romantic way of showing horror were now replaced by supernatural concepts, murderers and an excessive expression of violence.
The consequences of the continuous conflicts in Europe created the need of literature to describe stories that could scare and shock more than the actual reality. When evil (or merely anxiety about social turmoil) exists in people's daily life, in the form of wars or natural disasters or as insecurity and economic anxiety, the writer should get deeper to these experiences in order to move the readers.
That's exactly the need that romanticism and gothic novels and detective fiction want to fulfil by standing up their rules and structures against the trend of a modern ideal subject. In so far as it was a product of both the Enlightenment, detective fiction was meant to present the desire for order and pays only a little attention to horror and disgust which were
constituting subjectivity (Trotter, 66).
However, the genre was also the heir of romantic Gothic. In the early twentieth-century, crime novels focus also on what was darkly desired: “Detective fiction represents death before it represents desire. […] The ideological function of such stories is to ensure the triumph of mind over matter. […] If the object draws us into a desire for meaning, the object draws us towards death. It evokes horror and disgust (Trotter, 68-69).
1.2. The evil in gothic novels
Gothic narration is based on contrasting concepts which symbolize good and evil.
However, the success of gothic novels does not have to do only with the characters, the plot or the style, but mainly with the mysterious atmosphere that they create and the scenes of action that are made through imagination and, want to keep the reading intense.
On a first level, evil in gothic novels is above the human powers, suggesting something metaphysical. Humans seem to be insignificant in front of this mystery.
In the gothic novel we can see moving portraits, alive sculptures, gigantic ghosts as pieces of the guilty consciousness of the aristocratic tyrant, and the self-knowledge that the hero gains during the journey to solve the mystery and defeat evil. Regarding the scary locales where the novels are set, those make the scenes more mysterious and the power of evil stronger.
The evil itself is presented externally just in order to get internal in the heroes' soul. The external environment interacts with the internal psyche of the hero and in this way the scenery shows also the feelings of the hero. In this way the external evil with its supernatural powers symbolizes the internal evil.
1.3. From Gothic novels to detective novels
Detective stories are a subcategory of mystery stories. The key-word of detective literature is the word mystery, namely, everything that is incomprehensible to the understanding that exceeds the logic's powers like a crime or any other violent action. As Stephen Knight declares in his book Form and Ideology in Crime Fiction (1980): “[…] major examples of crime fiction not only create an idea (or a hope, or a dream) about controlling crime” (Knight, S., p. 2)
As already mentioned, although the detective novel is a relatively new genre, literature with crime and mystery topics existed already before Victorian times. Those novels focused on the search of the person who committed the crime. This is the reason some of them where used to be called 'Whodunnit novels': “The question mark hanging over the opening of the mystery or detective story is always the question of 'whodunnit?' - in other words, who committed the crime – and for this reason the term 'whodunnit' was coined in the 1930s to describe a type of fiction in which the puzzle or a mystery element was the central focus” (Scaggs, p. 35).
The narration of the investigations for the detection of the killer was the main topic in the plot, but the goals were psychological and philosophical, until the stories of Dupin of Edgar Allan Poe, who is considered the pioneer of the detective novel. Long before the
investigation of a crime got organized into the structured form we know today and the detective made his appearance, at the end of the 18th century, public leaflets were already showing interest in the cases of crimes and the stories of the criminals. The crime-related fiction of the late 18th century, was sympathetic towards the criminals, but this already
changed in 1773 (Charles J. Rzepka & Lee Horsley, p. 105-116). Stephen Knight in Form and Ideology in Detective Fiction (1980), attributes this change to the publishing of the Newgate Calendar, a monthly calendar of the Newgate jail in London, where all the prosecutions were written down by the guards. In the middle of the 18th century, this calendar was published by publishers in collective books and the presentation of the criminals' real stories was anything but pleasant to them (Charles J. Rzepka & Horsley p. 14).
interested in reading these leaflets. Being able to learn about real crimes made them feel excited as they felt they were participating in the action of the crime themselves. “The resonance of the Newgate Calendar created the genre of the Newgate novel, which was the literary recording of the calendar's real crimes but with elements of fiction” (Andreadis p.76). The presentation of the criminals’ changes causing a lot of conflicts and discussions, with the biggest one this for the ‘penny dreadfuls’, which were considered to be the reason for the criminalityof the teenagers. Though the influence of the penny dreadfuls was never proved, the anxiety and the interest were on the impact that the stories of those criminals would have on young children.
The detective novel is related also to the ‘sensation novel’, which appeared from the 1850s to the 1870s (Symons p. 4). Sensation fiction has its origins in the gothic and romantic literature and shocked the public with its topics such as adultery, murder, abductions, burglaries and harassment. These novels became very popular in Britain for their
melodramatic style and for their exploration of the criminals' biographies. The detective as a character made already his appearance in the stories of Dupin by Edgar Allan Poe, and the sensation novel focused more to the amateur investigator and less to the criminal. It is in fact an alloy that combines the realism of the Newgate novels with topics that include the
investigation from the detective such as the criminal's life, a hidden secret and its revelation. The editions above, whether they are magazines and newspapers of the 19th century or sensation literature were light works of popular culture, precursors of detective literature. By the end of the Victorian period, detective stories were established as a genre in literature, with a big readership:
“Although the publication of detective novels did not dwindle in the final decade of the nineteenth century, modern studies of the genre tend to identify this period as the golden age of the short story of detection, reflected in such anthologies as Marie B. Smith's Golden Age
Detective Stories”(Christopher Pittard).3
This fact was connected with the publishing of the monthly magazine The Strand Magazine (1891-1950) in England, where were first published the stories of Sherlock Holmes but also
1.4 The narration of the classic detective novel
As the ideal model in detective fiction, the transition from the short stories to full-length novels fully took place in the first half of the 20th century, a period in which the specific idiosyncrasy of the detective novel was formed. (Rozanis p. 83). But even before that, already in the 19th century we have books that started exploring a detective plot, like the book of Willkie Collins, The Moonstone, (1868). The book has been considered to be the very
first detective novel proper. Doyle too
published novels before he wrote short stories, though it was the huge success of the Holmes tales that established the short story as the predominant form in detective fiction.
The detective history of the Interwar period 1920-1940, is characterized more specifically as the golden age of the detective stories, in which were also established the rules of the genre that we know today. Many American writers like John Dickson Carr, S. Van Dine, Ellery Queen and more, were notable within the genre, however the British writers take the lead with authors like Dorothy L. Sayers, G.K. Chesterton, Margery Allingham and of course Agatha Christie prominent in the field. After the first period of the detective novel, the plot starts to focus
more on finding the murderer. The whole story is built around this character that remains unknown until the very end of the story. The purpose of the book is that the reader has to try and guess who committed the crime by all the evidence given in every chapter.
“The formal detective novel, the so called ''pure puzzle'' or ''whodunnit'', is the most firmly established and easily recognized version of the thriller. Sharing sources with the novel proper, boasting a tradition dating from Poe, and listing among its practitioners a number of distinguished men of letters, the detective novel has enjoyed a long, though slightly illicit, relationship with the serious literature” (Grella p. 31). 2 These stories have specific rules, they mislead the readers and they presentas an evil criminal the least likely suspect who is
discovered to be the killer at the end.
The classic mystery stories use the past tense in their narrative. Regarding the heroes of the
narrative, the division characters is based on the triptych: victim – detective – suspect and regarding the type of narration on the triptych: death – investigation – solution. So, to say we have two different timelines. The one of the crime, that we do not know when and how took place and that of the investigation. In his essay, The Two Principles of Narrative (1971), Todorov unpacks the meaning of this dual narrative:
“The explanation seems simple: at the beginning we witness the description of a state; yet this is not sufficient for narrative which requires the development of an action i.e., change difference” (Todorov T., p. 38) In other words, we need this change from past to present in order to explain how the crime is connected with the clues that the detective finds and to solve the mystery.
In another famous essay 'The Guilty Vicarage', “W.H. Auden succinctly defined the detective story's limits: “The basic formula is this: a murder occurs: many are suspected; all but one suspect, who is the murdered, are eliminated; the murderer is arrested or dies” (Symons p.14). The plot focuses more on the investigation than on the murder itself because this is what gives the clues which will lead to the revelation of the killer. The structure of the classic narration has as main subjects the discovery of truth, justice and the victory of morality.
“There have been a number of different explanations of the problem of pleasure in the detective novel. Some critics have likened it to the pleasure of solving crossword puzzles – a fairly intense mental activity that is unlike real-world problems in at least two key respects: first, for the reader as for the puzzle solver, there are no serious consequences at stake (hence we are in the realm of 'mere diversion'), and second, it is based on the generic guarantee that there is a solution, one that will be revealed either at the end of the novel or in tomorrow's crossword. (Crossword puzzles display something of the 'chain-solving' feature that mystery novels do as well.)” (Rushing, p. 89)
As in the crossword puzzles that the puzzle solver attempts to solve it all until the end, so in detective novels we have a reader who keeps reading to find the solution in the end. There is always something to expect in the book’s conclusion, and that is the magic, the answer to the mystery, that the detective novel offers to its readers.
innocence and guilt in the reader. He believes that we read detective novels in order
to feel vicariously a cathartic relief at the end, when a free-floating guilt is decisively placed in one individual – the criminal. For J. K. Van Dover, the identification of readers with the guilty killer does not exist, and neither does the connection of the readers with any other character (J. K. Van Dover p. 11-12). As readers, we suspect every hero in the story so we do not identify with any of them because we do not trust them until the mystery is solved. We do not feel relief because we are not guilty, but because at the end someone is proven to be the guilty one. In contrast, “Slavoj Zizek claims that detective fiction is based on 'avoiding the real of desire' – we read murder mysteries in order to 'realize' our antisocial impulses, to see them played out for us, but still be able to attribute them to someone else” (Rushing p. 90). Here Zizek refers to Lacan and his theory about the object and desire: “a point which never took place in '(symbolic) reality', which was never inscribed into the symbolic texture, but which must nonetheless be presupposed as a kind of 'missing link' guaranteeing the consistency of our symbolic reality” (Zizek, S., p. 50).
The detective novel’s readers are reading about something they cannot commit themselves. Cawelti says regarding this notion: “One of its special pleasures comes from the satisfaction of seeing a sequence of events not only shaped from a different perspective, but given a different kind of order” (Cawelti p. 89).
Michael Cohen has a similar view to that of Cawelti. For him with the event of the murder and, in general, with the image of evil being present in the detective novel, the catharsis of the soul happens in the end as we would like it to be in real life. Evil is isolated and justice wins. (Cohen p. 6, 15, 42-43).
Personally, I believe that the pleasure found in reading a detective novel comes from the structure of the narration while there is no emotional engagement with it. Relief comes from the loss of anxiety and stress about who might be the murderer and not from the shock that the readers get while reading such detailed analysis of such a violent action. What makes us feel pleasure apart from the anxiety to see the mystery solved, is seeing the murder as an aesthetic event - as a work of art, according to Thomas De Quincey. The detective narrative offers the reader an extremely familiar and attractive motif, the motif of real life in which prevail calmness and chaos, good and evil, me or the other and the list goes on: “The
conventions mentioned above were so strict that became rules and in 1929 were
recorded from Ronald Knox in the Decalogue of rules of detective literature” (Apostolidis p. 266). The existence of rules strengthens the feeling of the 'hide and seek' game and helps in the development of a relationship between author and reader. The reader knows from the beginning what he is going to read. The content might change, but the structure is the same and this is not necessarily bad. In Agatha Christie for example, the knowledge of the reader regarding the novel's structure beforehand, is not a negative element, but sometimes it even helps to keep the tension of the reader alive.
All these rules and conventions are necessary in detective novels, so the reader can be involved in the narrative. Bertolt, one of the advocates of the genre and its rules supports the notion that the only surprise that the detective novel is allowed to have is the revelation of the murderer (Poe p. 132). Also, Tzvetan Todorov pointed out that a good writer should never break the rules, but instead has to be committed to them (Poe 224). The genre requires the writer to serve it with the writing process and not by breaking the rules which compose it. The genre does not ask the authors to show off their craftsmanship, but instead asks for simple writing and a compliance to the rules.
Regarding the way of writing, detective novels have two contradictions. One is the rules that set the fair play of the game and the other the dense and very detailed narration that makes it harder for the reader to spot the guilty one and find the solution. It is true that the reading cannot be characterized as the effort to find the solution without the detective. The readers while reading the story see the detective solving the mystery. D. Grossvogel puts it well:
‘It is not completely accurate that the detective story gives to the readers an enigma […] just a few of the million readers of Agatha Christie tried to solve the mystery and find out the solution before Jane Marple or Hercules Poirot revealed it in the end. The detective story, in contrast gives to the readers the expectation to solve the mystery’ (Apostolidis p. 47). The readers wait to find a new clue in every page. The novel offers to them hints that help us to get one step
closer to the solution. It does not let them leave without an answer. They become detectives too by analyzing the clues and the characters.
solution will come in the end, the polite and nice language that they use, the closed
community that they present and the sexual neutrality of their heroes. For all these reasons, there is a familiar atmosphere that is overturned when is revealed how close the evil is in our lives and that the murderer is sometimes somebody who is involved in the investigation or rarely as it happens on The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, even one of the heroes.
1.5 The murder as an aesthetic event
In detective novels the murder and the evil are sometimes separated off from moral
interpretation and they exist in literature as aesthetic events. The barbaric action of murder in real life is a brutal fact, from which we cannot remove the moral meaning, in art from the other side it becomes a creative event. As Lucien Goldmann says: “The work of art is not philosophical: it is a universe of colors, sounds, words, and characters. There is no death, there is no Phaedra dying” (Goldmann, 135).
While talking about the procedure of writing and reading, regarding the success of the writing and the aesthetic joy found in reading, Bertolt Brecht underlines the idea that it should not be
questioned if the murder was right or wrong, but only if the murder was done the right way (Kouzelis p. 28). In this approach is based the aesthetic view of the murder and the way it is used in detective novels. For De Quincey “a perfect murder must entertain us before it does anything else; we enjoy it before we understand it, and it's important that our pleasure comes first” (Lehman p. 41).
And it is true that violence, the abhorrence and the extreme, are sources of aesthetic
experience, by offering entertainment. In his work On Murder Considered One of The Fine Arts, Thomas De Quincey attempts in an ironic and darkly humorous mood, to connect the brutal murder with the good taste and aesthetics, as well as linking murder with various philosophical sources such as Aristotle's catharsis. For De Quincey, “Assassination is a branch of the art which demands a separate notice;” (De Quincey p. 15). The person who is against the crime in detective novels is the detective himself, who is fighting the crime. From the other side however, he admires the murders as they offer him the chance to solve the mystery through investigation. The absence of mystery in his life makes him depressed. For an addict to detective fiction, a murder could be an immoral action, but first of all it is a mental problem which has to be solved first before it gets punished (Lehman p. 43). The reader should focus on both the action, that is the murder but also to the punishment of this action and the person who committed the crime.
When Agatha Christie broke the rules of the conventional structure of the detective novel, which required the murderer to not be the narrator, she introduced the fact that evil could exist anywhere and that no-one could be trusted. It is possible that the writer is honest by using dishonesty and that he or she will not hide any clue from the readers, but at the same time she or he will not reveal to them something very important. In order to do this, the murder needs to be considered as an aesthetic event used to create art and not as a crime against ethics.
CHAPTER 2
The detective novel of Agatha Christie: an approach to her work and how evil is presented
2.1 The detective novel of Agatha Christie
“There is an evil that comes from outside, that attacks so that all the world can see, but there is another kind of rottenness that breeds from within – that shows no outward sign. It grows slowly, day by day, till at last the whole fruit is rotten – eaten away by disease” (Agatha Christie, Death Comes at The End). 3
Agatha Christie's novels are considered to be some of the most culturally important and influential works of detective fiction, especially in so far as they present the mystery as an enigma. Regarding her techniques, Christie follows Doyle; she develops the concept of evil as it appears in the family secrets and the small communities she describes,4 overturning the opinion that things like these were unfamiliar tothe bourgeoisie,5 and dismantling the idea
that everything around us should be explained with logic and according to bourgeois values. With the detective's help the detective story starts from a position of ignorance to reach the understanding of the deepest mysteries in life.
3 Earl F. Bargainnier, The Gentle Art of Murder: The Detective Fiction of Agatha Christie, Bowling Green State University Popular Press, Bowling Green, OH, 1980, p. 112.
4 “Stephen Knight points out that, although there was plenty of 'real crime' in Victorian London, Doyle, particularly in the early stories, tended to focus on 'disorders in the respectable, bourgeois family', rather than on the most common forms of criminality to be found in the new conurbations” Lee Horsley, Twentieth Century Crime Fiction, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2005, p.17.
Already since Doyle, the detective novel's narration reflects the beliefs of the world regarding rationalism. Being herself a bourgeois, Christie writes in her books about the values and behavior of the middle class, which during the interwar years was marked by social stability, the desire for owner-ship of property, snobbery, chauvinism and xenophobia. Christie uses stereotypes in her narration such as the notion that American tourists are funny or that the children are innocent and old ladies are good.
Plain and Barnard have pointed out that from Christie's first book The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920) on, traces of anti-Semitism, appear in her fiction (Turnbull 78). Alison Light states that the way Christie presents issues of class and nationalism is hazy and cautious. She does not exacerbate xenophobic elements in her novels but is, considering the period, restrained.
For example, in the representation of her evil Shaitana in the book Cards on The Table (1936), she does not try to define his origin, even though he is a foreigner (Light p. 81): “The doubling of Anglo-American hero and ethnic or third-world villain so characteristic of the period is clear in some of the most compelling duos in literature: Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty (presumably Irish) (Delamater & Prigozy p. 9). As Cawelti believes:
The early history of the detective story clearly displays this double impetus. On the one hand, there is a very strong emphasis on the values of Anglo-American bourgeois culture in the stories of Conan Doyle and other early masters of the genre. On the other, there is the fascination with the exotic and the strange, which even Doyle clearly felt in such stories as A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four (Delamater & Prigozy, 9).
Nevertheless, for Christie the primary element was the structure of the detective novel itself and the game of misleading the reader. Foreigners appear more different than
dangerous and that is why the murderer in her novels could be anyone, with any identity and from any country. Regardless of whether she has been conservative or not, these kind of questions about the origin of the heroes do not have a reason to be placed in her novels, where the characters serve the form of the narration.
the opportunity for a surprise when Christie presents a hero in a contrary way from the first image she gave for that hero at the beginning. She might be presenting stereotypes, like the fear of the British community towards foreigners, but evil does not come from these depictions which are meant to be used as part of a setting-out of possible suspects and mislead the readers. In this way she is using the prejudices of her readers in order to lead them where she wants.
Taking into consideration Michael Cohen's view supporting the thought that the genres of popular literature primarily deal with questions regarding evil or good, but are actually closer to celebrating evil, Christie in her novels implies that every individual is responsible for their own destruction (Cohen p. 104). It depends on us if we will choose good and evil and from that fact depends our life.
The separation of evil and good is the main element of conservatism, but also of the non- realism in Christie,6 in whose work the harmony and order come always at the end of the plot. But even here, we cannot deny that these conventions are part of the genre they serve, that is, the detective novel.
In Christie's work, we notice that political and social topics that will occupy the literature of the 20's are present but do not interfere with the story. The genre seems to be closed to itself, to be interested only in its form. The world which is described in her novels focuses only on the topics that are interesting for the genre. For many scholars, though, behind all the genre's structure, it is possible that there might exist more topics and problems. Also, the writing of this period can be seen as a reaction to the bloodshed that the war caused. Specifically, as it is pointed out in Alison Light's book:
In her retreat from pre-war mores Christie's fiction increasingly emphasized the idea of private lives, and spoke to the new home centred pleasures of her expanding readership, of which the whodunit was one. It might seem more than churlish, then, to complain, as many have done, of the 'gutting' of characters, their insulation from life and the bloodlessness of crime between wars, when that anemia can be seen as a revolt against the sanguinary rhetoric of 1914, and as part of the hemorrhaging of national languages of romantic self- esteem. The idea that murder 'has to do with human emotion and deserves serious treatment'
(quoted by Symons, p. 132) was hardly the angle on slaughter which post-war readers would find revelatory. Nor were they likely to confuse literary fantasy with the real thing (Alison Light p. 74-75).
Christie gave to her readers in this way a place where they could feel safe and free during the difficult years of World War I. By creating mysteries in her stories, she kept the reader's attention on the book so they would keep reading in order to solve the case. The readers get so much involved to the story that they forget the problems of their daily life. The book was for them a different world in which they forgot everything else and they just had to solve the mystery. Lee Horsley says:
“The standard view of the uniformly insular and snobbish character of inter-war detective fiction is effectively challenged, for example, by Alison Light in Forever England. For a start, she reminds us that in the wake of the First World War, the need for reassurance, for a consoling pattern is a wholly understandable impulse. The setting – whether country house or the Oxford college – signifies a safer world; the preference for dandyish, 'bloodless' detectives can be said to embody a 'bearable masculinity'” (Horsley p. 39).
In Agatha Christie's novels the good characters (Poirot, Miss Marple, policemen, Hasting's assistant, the author of detective novels, Miss Oliver, all those who are occupied with the investigation of the murder) are clearly identifiable in comparison to the others, the suspects who are sharing the guiltiness till the end, where the mystery is solved. The suspects are potential carriers of evil, but at the same time also guilty because of the secrets they hide that disturb the order in the community.
The depiction of evil relates to the classification and separation of the bad heroes. Earl Bargainnier divides the suspects in Christie's novels into three categories (Bargainnier p. 128). The first is the couple, the second are the less plausible suspects and the last are the most likely suspects. In the first category, the couple has an alibi and it's easier for them to disguise while the main motive for them is money in order to live happy. The motif of the couple is used with a lot of variations (The Mystery of the Blue Train, 1928, Third Girl, 1966, Endless Night, 1967, The Murder at the Vicarage, 1930). The most famous motif of the couple is the erotic triangle in relationships. It is common for Christie to use a married couple whose happiness is threatened by a third person that intrudes into their relationship.
In this case, evil is the intruder which overturns the couple's serenity as well as the order of the community in which they live (Five Little Pigs, 1942). In another version, the intruder becomes the victim and in this case, evil is the tool which the couple uses in order to take its victim's wealth (Death on the Nile,1937, Evil Under the Sun, 1941). In the second category of the less possible suspect, Christie uses different versions of incrimination, like the guiltiness of the narrator (The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Endless Night), the guiltiness of all the suspects (Murder on the Orient Express, 1934), the revelation that the supposed victim is the murderer (Peril at End House, 1932, A Murder is Announced,1950). Here, evil lives in the community in which it attacks.
By evil we mean whatever is considered a sin, or something that is understood as breaking the rules of
humanity or those of nature and god. In the third category, the guilty is the suspect we had at first in our mind, but left our attention because the motive he had was overtly powerful (The Mysterious Affair at Styles), emphasizing on the ability of evil to fool and hide in the most obvious spots. As for the place that the evil appears, we see the opinion that Christie has about crime: evil is present everywhere even in the most ordinary places. In her novels location is important, because the place offers the clues for the revelation of the truth, it is a necessary condition for the setting of the crime. In some novels the place is really important for the solution of the crime. Objects or furniture are showing some clues regarding their spot in the room or the house (e.g. the place of the chair in the room of Ackroyd shows the murderer). Place however, has a secondary role, even if it gives clues for the solution of the crime because it could be replaced with any other place.
The most common places Christie uses are, for instance, a village or the countryside around London, such as the small community of Kings Abbott in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd or St. Mary Mead in The Murder at Vicarage. Other stories play out the city of London, or places out of England, mostly in the Middle East (Death in Nile, 1937, Murder in Mesopotamia 1936, Appointment with Death, 1938). She also situates some of her stories on various forms of transport, with a particular preference on the journeys with train (Death in the Clouds, 1935, The Mystery of the Blue Train, 1928, Murder on the Orient Express, 1934). The geographical spots that are abroad give her the chance to accentuate the drama. The community is out of its hometown, in a strange and unknown place, where it is asked to
face the evil which comes from the inside of the community, but also to not break down, but to stay united in an unknown place. In this way, Christie increases the sense of isolation of the community, but also the meaning of travelling which in the end of the case signals the beginning of their return back to the hometown.
Finally, the buildings Christie chooses to place her heroes are very characteristic, because in them, old and new elements are united into a harmonious whole, giving the chance to the reader to describe new desires and new ways of deception and also to show the nostalgic atmosphere of an old aristocracy (Light p. 80-81).
In the following chapters, we will approach the important themes which are repeated in Christie's novels, and the basic ways with which she shows the evil, and specifically in three of her most successful books, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, And Then There Were None and Seven Dials Mystery.
CHAPTER 3
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926), presents in 27 chapters the story of two murders, that of Miss Ferrars and the other of Mister Ackroyd, in the peaceful village of King's Abbott. The narration is written in the first-person, giving the role of the narrator to the doctor of the village, Dr. Sheppard. It is one of the few Christie stories where, the end does not entail the revealing of the murderer like it used to be with the previous stories in
detective fiction, but we have the confession of Sheppard who is one of the main characters and his suicide in the end. Poirot is called to solve the mystery of the murder of Roger Ackroyd and to discover how it is connected with the recent death of Miss Ferrars, his future wife, who was said to have murdered her husband. The book ends with an unexpected reversal, as Poirot finds the killer who seems to be Sheppard, while the last chapter is including his confession and the suicide letter of the doctor.
The novel, in the view of critics such as Howard Haycraft (Murder for Pleasure, 1941), is one of the best detective novels:
“It created an immediate sensation. Its critics, both those pro and those cons at once jumped into the battle over the author's fairness. The reason for the frenetic discussion is of course obvious. As virtually all humankind knows, Mrs. Christie, possibly for the first time, and certainly most dramatically, had pushed the principle that the murderer must be the least likely suspect to its ultimate conclusion: the ostensible narrator of Ackroyd is ultimately revealed as himself the murderer” (Russel p. 18-19).
“This device (or trick, as the reader may prefer)”, writes Howard Haycraft, the eminent historiographer of the genre, in Murder for Pleasure, “provoked the most violent debate in detective story history. Scarcely had the ink dried on the pages before representatives of one school of thought were crying 'Foul play!' Other readers and critics rallied as ardently to Mrs. Christie's defense, chanting the dictum: “It is the reader's business to suspect everyone.” (Russel p. 18-19).
Christie in this book changes the established structure of the detective novel by trespassing, two rules of Ronald Knox:7 a) the criminal must be mentioned at the very
beginning of the story, butcould not be someone whose thoughts the reader can follow, b) The detective's friends must not hide their thoughts from the reader. Their intelligence must be slightly below that of the average reader. The strategy of Christie in this book is the idea of guilt of the less possible suspect in combination with the trespassing of the principle that the narrator cannot be the killer. If we get close to some character in the book, then that character is Dr. Sheppard, who becomes our eyes and ears in the story. Whatever the reader knows is because of him. The dimensions and the information about the murder, the mystery of the locked room, the display of the closed community, Poirot's movements, are all known to us through Dr. Sheppard's description.
For R. Barnard, the strategy of misleading in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, is based on the sympathy we have for a character and who we exclude from the suspects because we see the plot being developed through his or her eyes. (Barnard p. 60-61). In this case we do not see only the motives of the narrator – killer, but mostly the technique of sympathy that the reader show towards the face of the killer.
Christie fools us because she directs us from the beginning to see the case from the wrong point of view. It is the basic trick where the hunter becomes the hunted, which she develops
7 “Ronald Knox was a mystery writer in the early part of the 20th century who belonged to the Detection Club, a society peopled by such legendary mystery writers such as Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, G. K. Chesterson, and E.C. Bentley. Know was also a Catholic priest, which is perhaps why he has tempted to write a 10 Commandments of detective fiction: If you write such stories, thou shalt obey these laws: 1) The criminal must be someone mentioned in the early part of the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allowed to follow, 2)All supernatural agencies are ruled out as matter of course, 3) Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable, 4) No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation at the end, 5) No Chinaman must figure the story, 6) No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right, 7) The detective must not himself commit the crime, 8) The detective must not light on any clues which are not instantly produced for the inspection of the reader, 9) The stupid friends of the detective, the Watson , must not conceal any thoughts which pass through his mind ; his intelligence must be slightly, but very slightly, below that of the average reader, 10) Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them.”
https://www.writingclasses.com/toolbox/tips-masters/ronald-knox-10-commandments-of-detective-fiction
with big success within her novels. She will use one more time a strong personality which wants to help the investigation, by taking a bit of the glory from the detective-like she does also, in the novel Three Act Tragedy- but with the use of the detective-criminal as a narrator. It is about a double misleading of the reader (I will not use the word deception because Christie does not do something dishonest, she does not lie, she just does not tell the whole truth),8 with which she presentsevil as a danger which is likely to impact upon human beings. Evil is not an element that exists outside people’s familiar environment, it exists within our community, it might be in the person next to us, in the person who we may trust, in our friend, or maybe even in ourselves. The enemy is internal in Christie's novels and that is why she was not occupied with the social margin, but she chose the upper-middle class so to say and its secrets which help her to this game of surprise and disclosure of the evil. With the narrative trick in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd Christie keeps the evil and the
mischievousness of this middle class and she brings anxiety and fear to the reader, she shows the existence of uncanny within something familiar. In the dialogue of Poirot with Sheppard, the detective does not exclude anyone from the list of the people who keep secrets in Kings Abbott: “Everyone concerned in them has something to hide.” “Have I?” I asked smiling. Poirot looked at me attentively. “I think you have,” he said quietly.” (Christie p. 80) The closed small community is the source of intensity, fraud, betrayal and the house becomes the scenery of death.9
Evil in Christie is not described emotionally or morally, but with the use of the narrative's structure and techniques, in order to symbolize the evil's existence within the familiar. In The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, she succeeds to give the feeling of evil's proximity not only by making us feel complicit, but also by using the elements and techniques of the narrative.
8 In the narrative technique of Ackroyd Christie leaved gaps between the omissions, so with a second reading the incrimination of Dr. Sheppard can be justified.
9 This is the period during which the novel supplanted the short story as the most popular kind of the detective fiction, and the form came to be increasingly characterized by an air of game – playing, several possible suspects and red herrings, an intriguing series of clues, elaborate methods of murder, intricate plots and a mystery requiring exceptional ingenuity on the part of the detective (Lee Horsley p. 31).
Christie uses three techniques in order to hide the evil: disguise, distraction and exposure. She hides the evil by exposing it which is the best disguise and the more efficient distraction for the readers: “The disguise succeeds because it actually shows whatever is trying to hide” (Lorandos, p. 66). In other words, the technique of presenting the narrator taking part in the investigation misleads the readers but at the same time shocks them in the end because they did not expect Sheppard to be the killer.
The fact that the guilty takes the role of a detective has a very important role because Christie gives us the motive of the detective-killer who has a knowledge of his guilt. Moreover, the killer has complete consciousness of his effort to fool the other heroes in the book. In both The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and And Then There Were None the writer seems to be playing hide and seek with the truth by using different techniques - like the use of disguise - and in this way the reader fails to find the truth.
Poirot himself introduces us to his assistant in the investigation. He is giving in detail the role that Sheppard will have in the investigation and in this way he does not allow us to put him on the list with the suspects. “You must have indeed been sent from the good God to replace my friend Hastings”, he said, with a twinkle. “I observe that you do not quit my side” (Christie p. 92).
Except, for the presence of disguise, Christie uses here also the battle between detective and killer as a symbol for the battle between good and evil. If we return to the text we notice that there is an irony in the sentence of Poirot, which hides the common perception that we must be close to our enemies. Has Poirot on his mind to cheat Sheppard by showing him trust? And if this is true, isn't this deception of Poirot similar to the misleading of the writer to the readers?
The game of thieves and policemen in the classic narrative is similar to the game of the writing and reading process. In the detective novel, this connection between them seems unfair. What we see however is that there is a validation that the good will win, so in the end the author will meet our expectations. We are reading the book in order to get fooled by her, in a process that looks like the path of her life. Things are not how they seem to be, people are trying to fool us in the book and we are trying to find hidden secrets which will lead us to solve the mystery.
In the small lecture of the doctor to Russell - who says that she reads detective novels- for the real absence of inexhaustible murders Sheppard says:
“The essence of a detective story, I said, is to have a rare poison – if possible something from South America, that nobody has ever heard of – something than one obscure tribe of savages use to poison their arrows with. Death is instantaneous, and Western science is powerless to detect it. That is the kind of thing you mean?”
“Yes. Is there really such a thing?”
“I'm afraid there isn't. There's curare, of course.” (Christie, p. 19).
In this passage we see the self-referencing of Christie's detective novel, who places her heroes to read such novels and talk about this habit, which is a technique of keeping a distance from the main event of the book. The doctor stresses the non-realistic character of detective novels which Russell reads. He implies that in real life evil is simpler and closer to us than how it is seen in these books and that there is no solution coming in the last pages. Other technique that Agatha Christie uses to keep a distance between the reader and the heroes is the weakness of connecting with someone from the heroes, the unknown details of the life of Poirot, and his sophisticated behavior. In the crime novel the main perception of evil is, that it is often identified with the term of the unknown. This term scares the readers and puts the battle between good and evil next to the battle for learning the truth which is the perception of Victorian times.
“I am acting in the interests of justice” (Christie, p. 104), says Poirot showing that the role of the detective is to restore the truth step by step.
Contrariwise, the police as an institution is presented as insufficient to face the evil. Inspector Raglan while trying to explain his thought he is giving a list of suspects, but in Christie's novels inspectors like Raglan or Japp are representing the limits of conventional wisdom and practice, which are being disputed by the detective novels. From the other side the genius detective believes that in order to find the truth you do not need only logic but also intuition and an insight.
Based on Horsley's view Poirot has the intuitive knowledge that traditionally belongs to women (Horsley p. 38). In his speech about women's observance and insight he says: 'Les femmes', generalized Poirot. 'They are marvelous! They invent haphazard – and by
miracle they are right. Not that it is that, really. Women observe subconsciously a thousand little details, without knowing that they are doing so. Their subconscious mind adds these little things together – and they call the result intuition' (Christie p. 135).
The outsider Poirot, because of his sexlessness and his foreignness (as a Belgian), is only partly accepted by the British society in which he lives, never fully managing to integrate. This position allows him to see things objectively and see even the smallest details. In a passage of the book we see Miss Ackroyd saying: “because it's so difficult for a foreigner to see our point of view” (Christie p. 145).
The irony is that this foreigner who entered their lives is the only one who understands better how to solve the mystery and the death of Mr. Ackroyd. Poirot will remain forever a
stranger. We hear about him from others, but he is a figure with no past. 10 A stranger who
functions in the novel as a catalyst in order to solve the mystery and find the murderer. Sheppard gives us a comic description of the detective and a lot of times he calls him 'Mr Porrott' underlining he is a foreigner:
“Modesty is certainly not his middle name” (Christie p. 122).
Christie gives to the inspector a funny appearance and an even funnier name (in French translation his name is pronounced as the poireau which means leek). He has a grand faith to the little grey cells (the gray cells of his brain), a small figure but also a big conceit. This comic dimension of his character beyond his eccentricity and his arrogance, becomes more obvious with his linguistic mistakes (he speaks using a childish syntax and he ignores the English idioms). 11 By keeping the old-fashioned manners that make him comic, he cannot be placed in the present but also not in the past. And while his ideas of justice and crime belong to the Victorian time, his taste is romantic, like those of the jazz generation.12 Poirot
10We know that he was working for the Belgian police but nothing more than this.
11 Poirot does not appear to be ridiculous or a kind of a clown but peculiar and arrogant because of his intelligence. Moreover, Christie had revealed to her daughter that her aim for Poirot was not the readers to make fun of him but to smile because of him. M. Lee
Alexander, Detective Fiction: From Victorian Sleuths to the Present, p.23.
12 E.g. “In the ABC Murders Poirot's avant-garde furnishing shocks the traditionally minded Hastings.
remains a hero of the past described in the present and in this way, he cannot be placed within a timeframe.
The main hero of a novel cannot be perfect. He should have imperfections that would underline that his has other strong points too and that he is a simple person of real life as the readers are. “Auden has said, “The amateur detective genius may have weakness to give him aesthetic interest, but they must not be of a kind which outrages ethics”” (Bargainnier p. 44). In the case of Poirot, his weakness might suggest the antipathy that Christie had for him13 in order to show his character not as perfect but as a deficit. However, the description of his weakness shows the skills of the writer to balance the narration between the serious investigation of the murder and her funny characters. 14
In addition, the way in which Christie has Sheppard describing the village is also comic: “Our village, King's Abbot, is, I imagine very much like any other village. […] but we are rich in unmarried ladies and retired military officers. Our hobbies and recreations can be summed up in the one word, gossip” (Christie p. 12). However, as his name (shepherd) and his position state, Sheppard should be the one who takes care and leads the citizens of the village. Instead, he is taking advantage of his position and his power as narrator and doctor by committing one more crime.
Poirot takes over the order and harmony of the village with his magic skills to defend the good and by ensuring the cohesion of the social community after the burglary. In many novels, his actions ensure the conjugal happiness, the union of the good hero with the unprotected girl, etc. The detective is the guarantor that keeps everything in order. He is the observer, the interpreter that the soul needs, who though is not endogenous, he proves to be able to cure all the problems. Poirot very often refers to his knowledge of psychology, which
13 It is known that Christie wanted to get rid of Poirot but she had a fear that she would be obliged from her publishers to restore him in her stories. Christie had not predicted this success in order to create his young personage and because of that his death came in an extraordinary old age. He died on the 6th of August 1975 in the novel Curtain and his death was the cover topic in New York Times. M. Lee Alexander, p. 24.
14 Christie uses comic elements on all the characters. E. g: the naive observations of Hastings or the cute quotes of Miss Oliver.
he thinks is the main component of his success: “Then there is the psychology of a crime. One must study that” (Christie, 88).
Regardless of the writer's intentions to refer or not to the findings of Sigmund Freud – which Christie
certainly knew - the concept of evil that she is giving with the help of the Freudian tools, gives a more dramatized look of the communities she shows in her novels.15 Freud
reveals in his workPsychopathology of Everyday Life (1992), that linguistic absurdity and memory loss are the demonstration of the suppressed desires and traits that our conscious self-rejects, but they come back in order to haunt us. If we suppose that the total community is an organism, then the criminal plays the role of the failure of Freud. The repelled desire- which has to disappear, so the community prospers – does not disappear because it is ornamental in human nature. This convulsion of the conscious, from the return of the suppressed unconscious, has as social equal the villages of Christie like King's Abbot, which look like places of blessedness, but they suffer from the existence of the socially suppressed citizens. Like the unconscious, criminal's offense signals the return of the repelled moment. In most of Christie's novels, Poirot forces the guilty one to confess by exposing the facts and the source of evil that is hidden in the past. And so, in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, oppressed and hidden secrets are revealed and the procedure looks like the therapeutic method of the ribs, in which the patient is led to the revival of the oppressed memory and experiences (e. g Five Little Pigs, 1942, The Mystery of the Blue Train, 1928, Sad Cypress, 1940, Mrs. McGinty's Dead, 1952, Murder on The Orient Express, 1934).
Sheppard seems to have repelled the evil crime, but with the process of the investigation and with the help of the detective this crime comes back to his mind. If we accept the matching of the investigation and the psychoanalytic procedure, then the narration of
15 For a lot of researchers there is no relation between psychoanalysis and the novels of Christie. Robert Barnard claims that Poirot's syllogisms represent a laic wisdom and nothing more. Alison Light says that Christie was really modern so that she would accept the power of the unconscious desires, but she meets Barnard's views that Christie's aim is not to examine in depth the subjectivity but to delimit and stop the derangement. (Alison Light p. 103). Finally, Merja Makinen, in one recent research, correlates psychoanalysis with the use of linguistic absurdities.
Sheppard fails because the narrator desires his detection. As a detective, his role is that of the healer of the community, and the crime-evil is the psychic illness from which the society must be relieved. In the procedure of the detective's disclosure, the narration goes gradually backwards, where the deeper cause is (the trauma, according to psychoanalysis), and many times the killer is forced to confess like a neurotic who has repelled his evil actions.
It is the course of Christie's narration itself, which borrows the prospect of the psychoanalytic procedure and leads the reader from darkness to light.
As we have discussed and by reading the novel, we see that in the story there is a non-stop battle between good and evil. Characters are also separated straightforwardly in good and evil. Poirot as a detective is acting in favor of good and he is trying to solve the mystery, stop the battle and bring justice in the community. But “does good triumph over evil? Who is good? Who is evil?” 16
Regarding the position of the murder in the novel Christie seems to agree with the view of
De Quincey, who supports that the murder in literature is seen as an aesthetic event. In this novel, we have more crimes than that of the murder. We have some immoral behaviors of the characters that are not revealed to the reader in order to keep the focus on the main event, which is the murder. For example, Ralph Paton is engaged to Flora but at the same time is married to Ursula Bourne who is a housemaid. Parker is blackmailing his employer. Flora stole some money from Ackroyd's room, and the list goes on.
De Quincey discusses the fear of death and how this fear for the murderer-artist becomes something greater, something seen as a piece of art. In his essay On the Knocking at The Gate in Macbeth, he mentions:
“In the murdered person all strife of thought, all strife of flux and reflux of passion and purpose, are crushed by one overwhelming panic; the fear of instant death smites him “with its petrific mace”. But in the murderer, such murderer as a poet will condescend to, there must be raging some great storm of passion, --jealousy, ambition vengeance, hatred which will create a hell within him; and into this hell we are to look” (De Quincey p. 5).
For him murder and crime evoke the aesthetic experience. The details of a murder must
