If And Then There Were None were a reality show—which, face it, it might as well be—all of the characters, at some point, would lock themselves up with the camera and insist that they didn’t come to make friends. The ten main characters maybe have a lot of company, but they’re all stranded in a mansion on a mysterious island with no way of getting back—and then they start to drop dead one by one. Talk about breeding fear and suspicion. After all, if there’s no one else on the island, then it has to be one of their own who’s killing them. Hard to feel warm and fuzzy about your fellow guests if you’re pretty sure that one of them is slipping poison into everyone else’s drinks.
Questions About Isolation
- Why did the characters go to the island in the first place? Why weren’t they more worried about being invited to a weekend by a stranger?
- Do the characters trust each other, or are they more on their own? If they trusted each other more, would they have had a chance of surviving?
- Why do you think U.N. Owen chose an island as the place to host his “party”?
- Do you think the characters would have reacted differently in the situation if they weren’t in such an isolated setting?
Chew on This
Justice Wargrave deliberately picks an isolated location so that the characters cannot escape from themselves; they have to sit and contemplate the deaths that they caused. This pre-death isolation is a part of their punishment.
If the characters were able to trust each other a little more, they might have stood a chance at surviving the weekend.