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Ten Little Indians. " Ten Little Indians " is an American children's counting out rhyme. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 12976. In 1868, songwriter Septimus Winner adapted it as a song, then called "Ten Little Injuns", [1] for a minstrel show.
- Introduction
- Author Biography
- Plot Summary
- Characters
- Media Adaptations
- Themes
- Topics For Further Study
- Style
- Historical Context
- Critical Overview
In 1939 mystery lovers eagerly awaited the publication of Agatha Christie's new novel, Ten Little Indians. They were not disappointed. The novel soon became a best-seller, gaining critical success along with its popularity. First published in England as Ten Little Niggers, the book was renamed And Then There Were None, from the closing line of the ...
Agatha Christie sets Ten Little Indians on an island that lies off the coast of Devon, England, where she grew up. She was born on September 15, 1890, in Torquay, a resort town on the Devon coast. Her parents, American Frederick Miller and Clarissa Boehmer Miller, born in Ireland, raised her and her two siblings in an upper-middle-class atmosphere....
Part I
In Ten Little IndiansChristie creates a masterpiece of mystery and murder. After ten strangers gather together on an isolated island off the coast of Devon, England, one by one, they each are dis-covered murdered. As those remaining frantically search for the murderer, their own guilty pasts return to haunt them. Mr. Justice Wargrave, lately retired from the bench, travels by train to Devon where he will be taken by boat to Indian Island. Seven others are also on their way there, most invited...
Part II
After they all agree to leave in the morning when Narracott comes in the boat with supplies, Marston gulps down his drink, chokes, and falls down dead. The others decide he must have committed suicide by putting something into his drink. After they go to bed, some think about the accusations against them. Wargrave insists Seton was guilty, but Macarthur admits that he deliberately sent Richmond to his death after discovering his affair with his wife. In the morning they discover Rogers's wife...
Part III
The narrative then shifts to a conversation between Sir Thomas Legge, Assistant Commissioner at Scotland Yard, and Inspector Maine about what happened on the island. Inspector Maine recounts how each died and tells the Commissioner that Isaac Morris, an "unsavory" man mixed up in drug dealing, made all the arrangements at the island and covered his employer's tracks. Morris was later found dead of an overdose of sleeping medication. Maine reviews the accusations from the record and can clear...
Dr. Edward Armstrong
Dr. Armstrong is coming to Indian Island to examine and treat Mrs. Owen after receiving a letter from her husband. He takes pleasure in a reputation as "a good man at his job" and so has enjoyed a great deal of success. However, "he was very tired…. Success had its penalties." As he travels to Devon, he alludes to a past incident that occurred fifteen years ago that "had been a near thing." During that period, he notes that he had been "going to pieces," and the shock of the traumatic event p...
William Blore
William Blore pretends to be Mr. Davis, a "man of means from South Africa," sure that "he could enter into any society unchallenged." His true identity as a detective hired to watch Mrs. Owen's jewels is quickly and easily exposed soon after he arrives at Indian Island. The narrator describes him as "an earnest man" and notes that "a light touch was incomprehensible to him." Lombard observes his lack of imagination. After discovering that Blore committed perjury during the bank robbery trial...
Miss Emily Brent
Miss Emily Brent, a "hard and self-righteous" sixty-five-year-old woman, received a letter signed "UN" from someone claiming to have met her years ago at a guesthouse. Her repressed nature becomes immediately apparent as she sits "upright" in the train, because she "did not approve of lounging." She agrees with her father, "a Colonel of the old school," who thought "the present generation was shamelessly lax—in their carriage, and in every other way." She sits in the compartment, "enveloped i...
Christie adapted Ten Little Indians for the stage. It first played with the novel's original title, Ten Little Niggers, in London, opening October 17, 1943; it was produced under the title Ten Litt...The novel was made into three film versions, all titled Ten Little Indians. The first (1966) was directed by George Pollock and starred Hugh O'Brian and Shirley Eaton. The second (1974) was directe...Appearances and Reality
The focus on appearance versus reality appears throughout the novel in the form of the underlying theme of deception. All the characters deceive others and sometimes themselves about their true natures. All profess to be good, but in reality are filled with evil in the form of moral corruption caused by intolerance, jealousy, greed, and desire. The action begins under a cloud of deception when Judge Wargrave, under the guise of the mysterious Mr. Owen, lures the group to Indian Island. The de...
Fear of Death
As soon as bodies start appearing on the island, the remaining guests are enveloped by the fear of death. Their instincts for survival cause them to sus-pect each other. As a result their primitive instincts emerge: Wargrave's mouth turns "cruel and predatory," Lombard's smile resembles that of a wolf, and Blore appears "coarser and clumsier" with "a look of mingled ferocity and stupidity about him."
Guilt and Innocence
The novel ties the question of the characters' guilt or innocence to the theme of appearance versus reality. At the beginning of their stay on the island, all the guests claim to be innocent. Some insist their crimes were committed by accident. Tony Marston explains that the accident that caused the deaths of John and Lucy Combes was "beastly bad luck." Louisa Clees' death, caused by Dr. Armstrong's drunken state in the operating room, was also accidental. The two, however, respond differentl...
Conduct a mock trial for Justice Wargrave to determine whether or not he should be convicted of first-degree murder. If he is convicted, determine his sentence.Research English culture and determine whether or not the characters would behave any differently if they were American instead of British.Read another mystery story and compare the two works, focusing on how the mystery in each is constructed.Investigate psychologists' conclusions on the nature of the criminal mind and compare those findings to the characterization of Justice Wargrave.Structure
The novel is structured as a mystery, although Christie adds her own innovations. Stories of good versus evil have been told since the beginning of time, but the mystery story emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century with the works of Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle. The mystery structure includes motives and alibis, detection, clues, and red herrings (diversions from the real culprit). Characters become suspects before the true one is unmasked. The hero discovers the villa...
Symbol
Christie uses the setting symbolically in the novel. The house becomes a symbol of the characters' fate. As the others search for "Mr. Owen," the narrator notes, "If this had been an old house, with creaking wood, and dark shadows, and heavily paneled walls, there might have been an eerie feeling. But this house was the essence of modernity. There were no dark corners—no possible sliding panels—it was flooded with electric light—everything was new and bright and shining. There was nothing hid...
Foreshadowing
This technique occurs when an old man sitting across from Blore on the train warns, "there's a squall ahead … Watch and pray…. The day of judgment is at hand." A squall will hit the island, literally and figuratively, and judgment will be pronounced and acted upon.
The world experienced a decade of aggression in the 1930s that would culminate in World War II. This second world war resulted from the rise of totalitarian regimes in Germany, Italy, and Japan. These militaristic regimes gained control as a result of the great depression experienced by most of the world in the early 1930s and from the condi-tions created by the peace settlements following World War I. The dictatorships established in each country encouraged expansion into neighboring countri...
Ten Little Indians has been a popular and critical success since its publication in 1939. This best-selling novel appeared during what critics determine to be Christie's most productive period, from 1926 to the early 1950s. Many consider Ten Little Indiansto be her best work. Scholars note that Christie owes a debt to earlier crime writers such as ...
In Agatha Christie’s nightmarish tableau of a novel, ten people are summoned as house guests to a remote island by a Mr and Mrs U.N. Owen. The guests assembled trade stiff dialogue over dinner and cocktails while musing about the celebrity of the island and puzzling about their hosts’ tardiness.
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The book and its adaptations have been released under various new names since the original publication, including Ten Little Indians (1946 play, Broadway performance and 1964 paperback book), Ten Little Soldiers, and official title per the Agatha Christie Limited website, And Then There Were None. [2]
- Agatha Christie
- 1939
And Then There Were None is a detective fiction novel by Agatha Christie, first published in the United Kingdom by the Collins Crime Club on 6 November 1939 under the title Ten Little Ni**ers, later edited to Ten Little Indians, and in the United States by Dodd, Mead and Company in January 1940...
Ten Little Indians is a nursery rhyme referenced in the 1939 Agatha Christie novel And Then There Were None. The rhyme: Ten little Indian boys went out to dine; One choked his little self and then there were nine.
"Ten Little Indians" is an American children's counting out rhyme. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 12976. In 1868, songwriter Septimus Winner adapted it...
