Greed And Selfishness In The Moonstone, By Wilkie Collins

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In Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone, we see the themes of greed and selfishness. These are primarily demonstrated through John Herncastle. In the prologue learn see that John Herncastle, a soldier in the English army, killed the three Brahmin priests who guarded the Moonstone in order to gain possession of it, while in India. Although he denies killing them we can infer that he did kill them because he was the only one there. Here is where we see both greed and selfishness for the first time in the novel, because he wanted the diamond for himself and was ready to do anything to get it. Even though the book never explicitly says that Herncastle thought his life was in danger because of the stone, it does tell us that Franklin Blake believes that

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