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THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD - Coggle Diagram
THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD
Genre
Conventions and typicality of crime
Misdirection, unexpected twists, dramatic revelations,
Ronald Knox’s Ten Commandments
SS Van Dine’s rules for detective fiction
Whodunit, golden age
Golden age mysteries were considered games
An outsider, often gifted investigates a murder in a closed environment by one of a limited number of suspects. The identity of the killer is concealed until the end
Red herrings
Detective and sidekick
Murder/theft/betrayal/affairs/suicide/blackmail
Victims/criminals/guilt/punishment/motive
Murder of manners
Reconstruction of the crime
Judgement/confession
Armchair detective
Themes
Crisis to order
Nature vs nurture
Poirot’s allegorical story in chapter 17
Precise combination of a weak character and the right circumstance
Secrecy
Method and logic
Classism/sexism
Assumption
Law vs ethics
Characters
Stock characters, some lacking depth, typical until the narrative calls for it.
Ralph Paton
Weak willed- supposedly engaged to flora
Hercule Poirot
Morally ambiguous, arrogant with a flair for the dramatic. Flamboyant and continental. Empiricist begins with unsubstantiated instinct- flexible approach with no hard and fast theory
Greatest strength is psychologically sizing up his suspects
Not above bending rules i.e befriending a murderer (keep your friends close enemies closer?), putting a false story in the newspaper , not legally obligated to hand over his findings to the police
Not motivated by money or rewards for his ingenuity more the abstract and philosophical obsession with the truth. Wants to bring cases to a psychological close rather than bringing in the law. Enjoys the glory/limelight
The novel sides with personal idiosyncratic ethical code- advises suicide to protects james’ dignity and Caroline
Caroline Shepperd
The comic relief often stems from her frantic obsession with the case
Almost representative of the readers of the novel- meta fictional instincts i.e Ralph Paton isn’t the killer as it would be too obvious
Dr. James Shepperd
The murderer, challenges readers assumptions, breaks trust.
Ultimately weak and desperate driven by self interest
We learn surprisingly little about him
His reveal as murderer was groundbreaking for its time- readers at the time could safely assume the narrator wad innocent in all cases
Writes ‘apologia’ as a sort of justification in doing so solidifies his arrogance and weakness
Flora Ackroyd
Stole money from Ackroyd
Motivated by an abstract but intense desire for freedom
Roger Ackroyd
Cecil Ackroyd
Hector Blunt
Stoic millitary man engaged to flora
Charles Kent
Illegitimate son of Elizabeth Russel with a drug problem
Ursula Bourne
Secret tell married to Ralph Paton- made out to be highly suspicious towards the end
Elizabeth Russel
John Parker
Blackmailed former employer
Context
Methods
Characterisation
Use of stock characters
Protagonist and antagonist
Tone
Stimulating and light tone, comical at times
Puzzle rather than a tragedy
Foreshadowing /allusions
Sheppard was ‘considerably upset and worried’
‘ i naturally aim at discretion’
Caroline describes her brother as ‘weak as water’
‘Wondering if i had left anything undone’
Climax
At the end- very typical
Understatements
Mrs Ferrars explaining that flora was only ‘borrowing’ the money
Allows placement of red herrings
Parallelism
Poirot draws parallels between all the characters
Readers can suspect each of them
Contrast
Contrast between police approach and Poirot’s approach
Irony
Dr Sheppard’s guilt
Symbols
The wedding ring/marrow /goose quill /mah jong
Shepperd wins a ‘perfect hand’ of mahjong and reveals secrets about his friendship with poirot int he victory- in committing his perfect crime he has an unconscious need to tell the secret to others
problem to resolution
Cyclical- poirot begins and ends his investigation focusing on the phone call
Setting
Close knit small town, allows Christie to explore hidden secrets with greater surprise
Apppearance of civilily hiding corruption
Powerful force of gossip- people spreading information have no incentive to lie- they want to be right and is therefore can be more accurate than face to face testimony. Poirot uses the gossip to find out about Ralph’s boots
Gossip doesn’t discriminate based on guilt or innocence- Poirot learns the customs of the town no in doing so uses gossip to his advantage to solve the case
Quotes
‘I naturally aim at discretion’/‘got into the habit of continually withholding all information’
‘Wondering if I had left anything undone’
‘At this moment that a foreboding of the future first swept over me’
‘Everyone of you in this room is concealing something from me’
Everyone is capable of committing murder and all people have secrets that could compel them to kill
‘Is it fate’/‘what is fate’
Encourages us to trusty shepperd more as Poirot seems to thing it is fate that shepperd (Hastings natural successor) is his neighbour
‘It is completely unimportant which is why it is so interesting’
‘Decidedly you have cells of a kind but it leaves a good deal unaccounted for’
Poirot doesn’t just pick evidence that supports the position he’s already predisposed to believe
‘He wants to know whether Ralph paton’s boots were black or brown’
Ensures Shepperd doesn’t follow the investigation to closely
Power of gossip
‘Let us take a man, a very ordinary man’
‘There was not much which escape Hercule Poirot’
‘ i congratulate you on your modesty and on your retiance’
Poirot is suspicious of Sheppard as he barely mentions himself - Christie criticizing the boring-ness of peripheral narrators- metaficitonal seems to be talking about the book itself
‘An overdose of sleeping draught’
Law vs ethics
Would Caroline truly believe her bothers death has nothing to do with the case- poirot relied on her gossip but is now withholding information from her
Poirot is both conscious and completely oblivious to the effects truth can have
‘I played Watson to his Sherlock’/‘Jigsaw’
‘I hadn’t reckoned with the trained servant complex’