Analyse how characters were used to explore the concept of justice.

In the novel written by Agatha Christie “And Then There Were None” published in 1939, Christie uses the characters to explore the concept of justice. This will address the ideas that the justice system was flawed, with cases remaining unsolved without criminal persecution, and how people have different methods to determine what is fair and how justice is reached.

Christie uses the idea that there is a major flaw in the justice system. Meaning that criminals with little evidence against them, slip through the gaps without being prosecuted and justice is not achieved. This was the purpose and underlying message of Christies novel “And Then There Were None” based in Britain in the 1930’s. Christie used the character Judge Justice Wargrave to convey this. Through his letter at the end of the book, that tells of his motive to create a large scaled unsolvable murder “something theatrical, impossible!”, .she is able to explain this idea which also explains why he chose to kill these people in particular.

The killing order that Wargrave is used to demonstrate how those with lesser crimes receive smaller or less harsh punishments to reach justice, in this case the earlier they were killed was intended to be less of a punishments as they didn’t have to go mentally insane waiting to be killed. When deciding the order, Wargrave weighed up all of the aspects to the crimes, he took into account the amount of people killed, the intent, the motive and the way that they were killed. An example of this is why Wargrave killed Vera last. “I wanted to kill… Yes, I wanted to kill. But – incongruous as it may seem to some – i was restrained and hampered by my innate sense of justice. The innocent must not suffer.” “The order of death upon the island had been subjected by me to special thought and care. There were, I considered, amongst my guests, varying
degrees of guilt. Those whose guilt was the lightest should, I decided, pass out first, and not suffer the prolonged mental strain and fear that the more cold-blooded offenders were to suffer” He believed that Vera was guilty of the worst crime out of all of the guests (criminals) he invited to the island. This is because Wargrave believed that her intent and the reasons for it, far out weighed the rest of the crime. The motive behind Vera’s crime was that this little boy was the nephew of her lover, Hugo and was standing in the way of him receiving a large sum of money as inheritance. The only way Vera could see to overcome this problem was for him to die so she took it into her own hands.