You know that funny feeling in the bottom of your stomach when you’ve done something wrong, like plagiarized an essay or spent all afternoon playing Flappy Bird instead of studying for Chemistry? A whole lot of the characters in And Then There Were None suffer from a chronic version of this ailment. The thing is, spending your life wracked by guilt may be uncomfortable, but—according to arbiter of morality Justice Wargrave—it’s a whole lot better than being self-righteous and self-satisfied like one Miss Emily Brent.
Questions About Guilt and Blame
- What is the difference between the characters who feel guilty, like Vera and General Macarthur, and those who don’t, like Emily Brent and Philip Lombard?
- Why didn’t Vera tell anyone about what she did if she felt so guilty about it the whole time?
- Does Justice Wargrave feel guilty about “sentencing” all the characters on Soldier Island to their deaths?
- Why does Vera kill herself at the end of the novel?
Chew on This
Vera Claythorne commits suicide out of guilt, not because someone is forcing her to. Her death is the only one that doesn’t count as murder.
Though Justice Wargrave ends up killing all ten people on the island (if you include himself), he feels no remorse—making him the real psychopath.