Past Stories

Response to Justice Wargrave

This chapter is not a narrative piece. This is a sort of response to the actions of Justice Wargrave from And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie. I suggest that you all read this book, for it is a thrill ride from the beginning to the unexpected end.

WARNING: Spoilers for the book And Then There Were None, and mentions of death.

In the last chapter of And Then There Were None, Justice Wargrave’s explanation of his grand murder is presented after being found in a bottle from the sea. The letter consists of the judge’s backstory, motives, and strategy that influenced the events of the novel. He tells about how he had always had a desire for murder whilst strangely having a sense of justice. Wargrave says that, “It is abhorrent to me that an innocent person or creature should suffer or die by any act of mine”, according to page 262. This led him to preside over the court of law as the man who would punish those who were not innocent.

However as he grew older, and more bloodthirsty, Justice Wargrave began to fantasize about himself committing a murder. Though he restrained himself due to his belief in protecting the innocent, he later started to search for ways to make his dreams a reality. After an exchange with an acquaintance, Wargrave plotted his twisted strategy for his new-found victims. The story afterwards is known: ten people are drawn to the island, people begin to die in unnatural ways, eventually leaving no one alive on the island.

Justice Wargrave explains his motivations and beliefs quite thoroughly in the end. Although he mentions that he is not in the best state mentally and that he enjoys killing, his judgement of these people may not have been completely unjustified. He killed everyone on the island based on how guilty each individual was. Wargrave believed that Mrs. Rogers was the least guilty while Vera Claythorne was the most guilty.

While I understood the first four deaths on the island, Mr. and Mrs. Rogers, Anthony Marston, and General Macarthur, the rest of them required a deeper analysis of the justice’s thought process. Emily Brent was the next person to be murdered, but I did not quite see why she was the fifth to die when she did not directly murder someone. I was confused because I had thought that she would have died before General Macarthur because the general actually wanted his victim to be killed, however he died before she did. Then I remembered that, before Wargrave killed Macarthur, the general was awaiting his death, remorseful of the sin he had committed long before then. On page 117, Macarthur says, “ ‘The blessed relief when you know that you’ve done with it all –that you haven’t got tot carry the burden any longer. You’ll feel that too some day...’ ” This shows that, in the end, he truly regretted his crime. When Brent died, she thinks of the girl who died because of her actions, but is not shown to feel sorrow for her. After realizing this, I believed that Wargrave also took into consideration the amount of guilt the person felt before their demise.

This fact paved the way for the reasonings for the next deaths of the unfortunate party. Dr. Armstrong was the next person to die, being pushed off a cliff by Justice Wargrave. I understand his death, as he was looking for reassurance that he was safe within the law while doing surgery on a woman while drunk. He is not seen to be too sorrowful about her death. Inspector Blore died shortly after, a bear-shaped clock being dropped on his head. Before he died, he recalled his victim vaguely and wondered about his family. I do not think he regretted his crime very much. Phillip Lombard was shot by Vera Claythorne after they found the doctor’s body. They are both seen accusing each other next, and, while they carried Armstrong’s body up to the house, Vera pickpockets Lombard’s revolver. Lombard reflects on how he had always taken risks in life, but he was choosing to deal with the situation in an argumentative way. Before finally rushing at Vera, she shoots him, killing him instantly. Since Lombard is seen throughout the book saying that he never regretted abandoning his victims to die (he even said that he believed they did not mind it), I concluded that his death was justified.

Finally, Vera Claythorne is the last person to die on the island (who is part of Wargrave’s victims). She hangs herself after realizing that this is what “Hugo wanted her to do”. I think that one of her last lines is one of the most cold-blooded lines in the entire book. On page 244 near the bottom of the page, she thinks, “That was what murder was –as easy as that! But afterwards you went on remembering....” Vera is seen (especially towards the middle of the book) admitting things like, “Horrid whiny spoilt little brat! If it weren’t for him, Hugo would be rich...able to marry the girl he loved....” This quote was found on pages 196 and 197, Vera was talking about Cyril, the boy who we learned she actually meant to kill. I think that her death is justified in a way because she is never seen feeling remorse for the boy, in fact she is really only seen feeling sorry for herself because she was rejected by her fiancé. Even in her death scene, she is thinking about Hugo and doing what Hugo would have wanted her to do. I believe that she must be the most guilty because she does not kill herself because of Cyril.

In conclusion, I believe that Justice Wargrave’s methods and ways of killing these people were definitely inhumane and harsh for most of these people. However, these people were not entirely innocent, and the way that Wargrave gauged his victims’ guilt proved to be morally-based rather than logically. I believe that he judged them based on their inner guilt correctly, but the punishments they faced were far exceeding what their crime was. Nevertheless, I think that they should have been punished within the law, and that each and every one of them should have spent at least some time behind bars. Justice Wargrave’s Old Testament mentality of “eye for an eye” is an exaggeration of how delinquents and sin should be dealt with. In the end, I believe that Wargrave was, of course, a sociopath whose beliefs were justified through extremity.

A/N: Thanks for reading!