摘 要

善恶和复杂的人性是侦探小说永恒的话题，也是专家和学者们研究侦探小说的主题之一。侦探小说女王阿加莎·克里斯蒂《无人生还》将这种善与恶的冲突和人性的复杂表现得淋漓尽致。在该作品中，十个人出于不同的目的登岛，在被指控曾犯有谋杀罪后，岛上的客人都按照童谣里述说的方式死去，他们努力想找出凶手，却徒劳无功，最终，无人生还。本文旨在通过法官沃格雷夫展现正义与邪恶之间的冲突以及人性的复杂。本文分为六个部分：第一部分介绍阿加莎及其作品《无人生还》；第二部分从身份和动机层面对法官沃格雷夫进行分析；第三部分描绘一幅人性复杂之图；第四部分介绍阿加莎的正义理论；最后一部分是总结。通过对法官沃格雷夫动机和身份的分析，人性之复杂及正义和邪恶的一线之隔可见一斑。

关键字：正义感；杀戮欲；无人生还；劳伦斯•沃格雷夫

Abstract

The issue of justice and evil and the complexity of human nature are always the theme of detective fiction and the field that experts and scholars study. Agatha Christie, the Queen of Crime, shows a picture of the conflicts of good and evil and the complexity of human nature in her novel And Then There Were None. In this novel, ten people came to the island for different reasons. However, after being accused of committing murder, the ten guests were killed as the rhyme indicated. The left tried to find the murderer but failed. In the end, there were none. This paper tries to study the conflicts and integration of justice and evil with the study of Lawrence Wargrave. This paper is divided into five parts. Chapter one introduces Agatha Christie and her work And Then There Were None. Chapter two analyzes Lawrence Wargrave in term of identity and motivation. Chapter three shows an image of how complicated human nature is. Chapter four introduces Agatha Christie`s judicial preference. Chapter five makes a conclusion. By analyzing the identity and motivation of Mr Justice Wargrave, we can get a picture of the complexity of human nature and distinguish the line between justice and slaughter.

Key words: sense of justice; the blood lust; And Then There Were None; Lawrence Wargrave

Contents

1 Introduction 1

1.1 Agatha Christie 1

1.2 A general idea of And Then There Were None 2

2 An Analysis of Lawrence Wargrave 3

2.1 Double identities 3

2.2 Double motivations 5

3 The Complexity of Human Nature 8

3.1 The conflicts between good and evil 8

3.2 The integration of the blood lust and a sense of justice 9

3.3 The fine line between justice and slaughter 9

4 Judicial Preference in And Then There Were None 11

4.1 The end to everyone 11

4.2 Partial objection of the conventional justice theory 12

5 Conclusion 14

References 15

Acknowledgements 17

The Integration of The Blood Lust and A Sense of Justice

-- An Analysis on Identity and Motivation of Lawrence Wargrave in And Then There Were None

1 Introduction

Crime literature is almost the most widely read genre in the United Kingdom, the United States and many other countries. Detective fiction made its first appearance in the middle of the nineteenth century. American writer Allen Poe was considered as the founder of western detective fiction. He created the first detective Dupin in The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841). However, detective fiction did not become popular in America until Katharine Green published The Leavenworth Case (1878). In Europe, detective stories gained a wide range of readers. The most world-known writer at this time was Conan Doyle, who created the most famous detective Sherlock Holmes (Ghosh, 2013). Then came the "golden age" of western detective fiction. Agatha Christie was a representative detective novelist during the period.

Agatha Christie is one of the most famous detective writers in the world. Both herself and her works are thought highly. She is considered as “the Queen of Crime”. Her novel And Then There Were None (1939) is considered it as “a difficult technique which was a challenge (Christie, 1972)” and “the most baffling mystery Agatha Christie has ever written (Anderson, 1940)”.

1.1 Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie is listed as the best-selling novelist of all time. Her novels have sold roughly 2 billion copies, the third in the rankings of the world's most-widely published books, outsold only by Shakespeare's and the Bible. Christie has created two famous detectives－－Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. Poirot appears in 33 novels and 54 short stories like Murder on the Orient Express (1934) and Death on the Nile (1937). Later in 1927. Miss Marple makes her appearance in 12 of Christie`s novels such as The Moving Finger (1950) and A Murder Is Announced (1950). Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, two classic characters in Christie`s works, are most enduring and endearing star in the history of detective stories (Zhang, 2014).

The breadth of themes in Christie`s novels is quite extraordinary. Almost her works are fantastic examples of the use of psychology in literature (Zhang, 2008). Christie is good at analyzing the mentality, actions and words of criminal, so as to inquire deeply into the subtlety of human nature(Wang, 2005). She attaches great importance to the inner world and the uneasy consciousness of the criminal, making the image of the criminals in her work more vivid.

Agatha Christie has her own style of writing. Her works start off suspiciously, then develops into incredible things and end unpredictably. Christie is good at describing social reality, background and custom in every murder (Angela, 2013). Most of Christie`s works complies with classic structure that the detective explains the course of his deductive reasoning and reveals the guilty, but there are exceptions in which the guilty party explains all, such as And Then There Were None.

1.2 A general idea of And Then There Were None