And Then There Were None by Lèrowen on Polyvore.com
The above collage was made by our new member Lerowen… I think that it is positively wonderful!
Anyway, sorry I’m a few days late everyone! I’ve got my chemistry final exam on Tuesday and I’ve been swamped with studying!
How did you all enjoy this month’s book? I’ve talked to some of you and it sounds like this was a popular one! (It’s one of my favorite books! 
)
Anyway, I look forward to hearing your thoughts, and, if it suits your fancy, to reading and joining in discussion around the following questions OR whatever caught your interest.
(PLEASE note: You don’t need to fill out answers to all of the questions unless you want to. Just read through them and pick something that you feel like sharing or discussing further. It’s up to you and there are no rules about how much you can share- or how little. *smiles*)
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First, there were ten – a curious assortment of strangers summoned as weekend guests to a private island off the coast of Devon. Their host, an eccentric millionaire unknown to all of them, is nowhere to be found. All that the guests have in common is a wicked past they’re unwilling to reveal – and a secret that will seal their fate. For each has been marked for murder. One by one they fall prey. Before the weekend is out, there will be none. And only the dead are above suspicion…
Reading Group Guide Questions
1. Who is telling the story of And Then There Were None? What effect did the tone, voice, or language employed by the narrator have on you (i.e., it was frightening)? Explain.
2. What is a motive? (Distinguish between the words motive and motivation.) What motives, if any, did each of the ten guests have for committing these horrible murders?
3. Did you “see it coming”? If not, before you read the “Manuscript Document,” what did you think explained the murders? If you were asked to rewrite the story’s conclusion, which character would you make the murderer and what would see as his/her motive?
4. Which one of the killings depicted in the novel seemed especially accurate or believable to you, and which one seemed especially incredible or fantastic? How would you rewrite the former murder so that it is less realistic, or the latter so that it is less farfetched?
5. Discuss the depiction of group psychology in this novel. Are there any scenes where events or ideas are altered or influenced by how the characters interact with one another? Also, does the dynamic of group psychology in this novel strike you as realistic, frenzied, contrived, simplified, or otherwise?
6. Think a bit more about how this story is told, especially its remarkable plot. What are the inherent problems a storyteller might encounter in killing off all of his or her main characters one by one? And what are the problems an author might face in basing his or her plot on a familiar nursery rhyme? How does Christie successfully avoid these problems, or if you think she fails, how so?
7. Were there moments when you as a reader thought the characters were acting in ways such as you yourself would have acted? If so, explain.
If not, how and why would you have behaved differently?
8. Though there isn’t a real “main character,” Vera Claythorne is one of the more fully developed ones (if only because she lives longer). What do you think of the way that she dies and do you think it is consistent with her character up until that point?
9. The effect of guilt emerges as one of the major underlying themes in the book. Based on your own experience, how accurately does Christie portray the different human responses?
10. Talk about the idea of “justice” in the mystery. Did people “get what they deserved,” or were any of the characters punished unfairly? Does “just behavior” (i.e., Warfield punishing the others for their prior actions) mean that you are a “good” person? Why or why not?
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CHRISTIE ON “And Then There Were None”
And Then There Were None is one of the most carefully planned of Christie’s mysteries; she herself considered the plot “near-impossible.”
“It was so difficult to do that the idea had fascinated me…I wrote the book after a tremendous amount of planning, and I was pleased with what I had made of it.”—Agatha Christie: An Autobiography, 1977.
The rhyme comes from a Victorian music hall show song written by Frank Green in 1869, an adaptation in itself of the American comic song, Ten Little Indians, written by Septimus Winner, published in 1868.
© 2006 Agatha Christie Ltd, A Chorion Company. All rights reserved.
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