It is known that the “perfect guy” persona should not be trusted, no matter how he may be characterized. Agatha Christie’s novel And Then There Were None perfectly illustrates this through the character Phillip Lombard. Phillip Lombard, portrayed as the hero, the man who will save everyone and kill the murderer, is one of the worst on the island. Because Wargrave’s goal was to kill those who were the least guilty first, he exposes and deals with Phillip in the best way possible. The guilt, as a result of his crime, begins to tear him apart. The crime that Phillip commits and the way he dies are definitely in association with each other. Phillip is one of the few remaining characters on the island towards the end of the novel. While Phillip …show more content…
talks with Vera Claythorne, she shoots him in the head with a revolver that belongs to him.
The manner and timing of Phillip’s death is essential to his overall characterization. It also gives insight on why he should be killed. Phillip death is carried out by a woman, which is ironic because Wargrave asks Phillip “if women were capable of homicidal mania” (Christie 125) and Phillip replies, “of course not” (Christie 125). His death shows that his arrogance is his fate. Phillip’s murder could have easily been prevented. Because he believes that women are not capable of “homicidal mania” (Christie 125), he is extremely careless around Vera and she is able to discreetly remove his gun from his pocket. One would think that someone who was hired to be “good man in tight places” (Christie 5) would be able to keep a cool head and not have their gun stolen. Wargrave makes Phillip wait for his death, just as Phillip’s victims were forced to die a slow death of starvation. As the natives were dying, Phillip’s sense of humanity was dying as well; he was now described as having a “wolf’s face and horrible teeth” (Christie 216). He was …show more content…
slowly revealing his true side to the other characters. He was an animal who’s cruel and selfish will to do anything kept him alive. Phillip’s selfishness was his overall crime since he left twenty-one men in the wild to die for his “self-preservation” (Christie 54). This so-called “good man” (Christie 5) admitted that he would commit another murder if he would benefit from it. The thought of killing someone for the right price is terrible. Phillip’s arrogance and selfishness leads to his death, by the one thing he thought could not kill him. Phillip the “good man,” the wolf, is killed not by Wargrave, truly not even by Vera, but by his ego. The longer Phillip stays on the island, the more his mental state changes, and to the other characters, he changes physically.
As stated previously, Vera eventually pictures Phillip as a wolf. She starts to fear what he is becoming. The good guy is slowly driven to his animalistic side. This shows that Phillip is becoming aware that he may be the next to die and that the wait is altering him mentally. As he becomes more afraid of his outcome, his sense of humanity fades. Vera is the first to point out Phillip’s wolf-like features, she also witnesses decline in his humanity. Vera suggests that they should move the body of Blore, one of the other characters, to a place where the other bodies were so that it looks neat. Phillip tells Vera that he thinks they can leave the body where it is. This situation shows that Phillip is not concerned about the location of the body and thinks that it is just fine to leave it there and rot or be swept into the sea. Phillip’s mind is no longer as strong as it was at the beginning of the novel. He is turning into a shell of
himself. The crime that Phillip commits warrants his death. Just as he indirectly, but purposefully, kills the natives by taking away their food, Wargrave convinces him to assist with the murders but knows he will eventually be killed. Wargrave knows that Vera will begin to feel guilty and afraid and kill Phillip for her own self-preservation, just as Phillip kills the natives for his self-preservation. Vera shoots Phillip in the heart, killing him quickly, just as Phillip was quick to make the decision to abandon the natives; there was no hesitation in neither of the acts. It is ironic that Phillip’s crime shows he does not have a heart, yet it is the place of the fatal bullet. Phillip deserved to have died when he did in the novel, in correspondence with the poem. He deserved the mental strain of waiting for his death, just as the natives did knowing they had no food. Phillip Lombard, a man with no heart, received the appropriate death for his inhumane crime. The mental strain and mind deterioration along with the manner of death of Phillip are all associated with Phillip’s overall being. He is originally portrayed as the good guy, but after his crime is revealed that no longer the case. His arrogance and selfishness only resulted in his death. Any decent human would never even consider leaving 21 men with no food in the wild. The point is, Phillip Lombard was not a man, but an animal who lived for himself and dies by himself.
Both the book and the movie show that the story mostly took place on the cay.But the movie started with Phillip on the boat with his mother and when the story started Phillip and his mother had not left yet.Both the story and the movie and the movie described the boat Timothy and his mother was on.But the movie described it differently than the book.
Alderman, one of the praying Indians, knew of Phillips whereabouts and told the English where he was. The English killed Phillip and let Alderman keep Phillip’s hand in a bucket of rum so he could show everybody. His head was severed and placed in a cage in Plymouth for everybody to see.
In the true crime/sociology story, “Best Intentions: The Education and Killing of Edmund Perry” the author, Robert Sam Anson had provided an immense amount of information from reportings about Edmund Perry’s death and life before he died. Anson has developed Edmund’s character and experiences through reporting that I have related and connected to. Information reported by Anson has helped me find a deep connection towards Edmund Perry’s home environment, junior high experiences, and personality at Philips Exeter. Themes such as hopes and dreams, loyalty and betrayal, journey, and family ties are intertwined in the story and becomes blatant. The congruences between our lives have better my understanding of the story and Edmund’s life.
“She still today never told me she loved me…never… never in her life … it’s too hard to explain,” says Anthony Sowell as he mentions his mother while he is being interrogated by Cleveland Homicide Detective (Sberna). The classic neighbor that every family wishes to have, friendly, helpful and caring was holding back numerous secrets. In Anthony Sowell’s actions of the rape, beatings and murder of 11 innocent women, he demonstrates the qualities of a human monster while showing how nurture creates a personality as well as proving that humans are capable of creation more fear than those who are written about in fiction.
Guilt is the inevitable consequence that comes along after committing a crime and is a feeling that can paralyze and tear one’s soul away. However, it is evident that an individual’s feelings of guilt are linked to what they believe is right or wrong. In Robertson Davies Fifth Business, guilt is a principal theme in the novel and its effects have a major toll on the lives and mental state of many characters. Throughout the novel, it is apparent that the values and morals instilled within childhood shape an individual’s personality, as exhibited by the different ways the characters within the novel respond when faced with feelings of guilt. The literary elements Davies utilizes in the passage, from pages fifteen to sixteen, introduce the theme of guilt and display the contrast in how
Romantic love stories are often ended with a tragedy, because of loss of passion or a loved one. These tragedies are often the result of one person’s actions that ended someone’s life or love. In the Romeo and Juliet play written by William Shakespeare, two citizens of Verona come together and fall deeply in love. Unfortunately their love comes to an end, along with their lives, because of a misunderstanding and a persistent feud between their families. Although there are many characters in this play that have contributed to Romeo and Juliet’s death, Friar Laurence is the person most to blame.
One of the basic assumptions underlying any detective novel is a sense of social order. The novelist assumes that the reader agrees that killing people is wrong; it does not matter if the victims are exemplary citizens or odious individuals, it is the mere act of snuffing out another’s life that is against the social order. In P.D. James’ A Mind To Murder, Nurse Marion Bolam’s murder of her stuffy and self-righteous cousin Enid illustrates a situation where the nurse and her invalid mother had suffered from her cousin’s stinginess; James gives us a clear look at the murderer’s fear that if Enid had been given time to change her will as she had threatened to do, the Marion and her mother would never get the money to which they considered themselves entitled. However, James urges us to understand, this does not matter. Murder, for whatever reason it is committed, is still murder, and it is always wrong.
In Harry Mulisch’s novel The Assault, the author not only informs society of the variance in perception of good and evil, but also provides evidence on how important it is for an innocent person experiencing guilt to come to terms with their personal past. First, Mulisch uses the characters Takes, Coster, and Ploeg to express the differences in perspective on the night of the assault. Then he uses Anton to express how one cannot hide from the past because of their guilt. Both of these lessons are important to Mulisch and worth sharing with his readers.
“I’ve got out at last,” said I, “in spite of you and Jane. And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!” –(656). The narrator of the story has a complex personality. Who is to say she is round but static? Many readers have their own opinion whether to say she is reliable or not. In this essay, we’ll be discussing what makes the narrator unreliable. How does the character enhance the story, and how would it change if told by another character perspective?
One must decide his or her future on whether to live with their most cherished person, who is considered a killer, or to live by oneself for self-benefits. George Milton, in Of Mice and Men, pulls the trigger against his best friend, Lennie Small, who accidentally kills a woman. While one may believe that people should not murder their companions, Lennie’s mental and physical state shows that George’s decision is correct. Although George loved his friend, Lennie’s mental handicap, emotions, and accidental human killing forces George to do what he did.
Human nature is a conglomerate perception which is the dominant liable expressed in the short story of “A Tell-Tale Heart”. Directly related, Edgar Allan Poe displays the ramifications of guilt and how it can consume oneself, as well as disclosing the nature of human defense mechanisms, all the while continuing on with displaying the labyrinth of passion and fears of humans which make a blind appearance throughout the story. A guilty conscience of one’s self is a pertinent facet of human nature that Edgar Allan Poe continually stresses throughout the story. The emotion that causes a person to choose right from wrong, good over bad is guilt, which consequently is one of the most ethically moral and methodically powerful emotion known to human nature. Throughout the story, Edgar Allan Poe displays the narrator to be rather complacent and pompous, however, the narrator establishes what one could define as apprehension and remorse after committing murder of an innocent man. It is to believe that the narrator will never confess but as his heightened senses blur the lines between real and ...
...he theme of guilt that builds within Briony character and writing. The structure of limitations provided by McEwan’s highlights the emotions of Briony herself. As the critic Finney addresses the narrative form, McEwan presents the corruption of the negative appearance displayed in the writing of the narrator her self. Briony uses the novel to atone for her sins, in a way to make up for the foolish acts she as committed, giving the readers sympathy to forgiver for her actions. The inability to achieve atonement is demonstrated within the novel continuously highlights the element of guilt. The attempt at atonement helped Briony, which alludes the over all theme that the ability to achieve atonement is in the hands of the beholder. Untimely, the consequences amplified the writing style that conveyed the understanding of the selfish actions that tore apart two lovers.
As a literal deathbed revelation, William Wilson begins the short story by informing the readers about the end of his own personal struggle by introducing and immediately acknowledging his guilt and inevitable death, directly foreshadowing the protagonist’s eventual downward spiral into vice. The exhortative and confession-like nature of the opening piece stems from the liberal use of the first person pronoun “I”, combined with legal and crime related jargon such as, “ crime”, “guilt”, and “victim” found on page 1. Poe infuses this meticulous word choice into the concretization of abstract ideas where the protagonist’s “virtue dropped bodily as a mantle” (Poe 1), leading him to cloak his “nakedness in triple guilt” (Poe 1). In these two examples, not only are virtue and guilt transformed into physical clothing that can be worn by the narrator, but the reader is also introduced to the protagonist’s propensity to externalize the internal, hinting at the inevitable conclusion and revelation that the second William Wilson is not truly a physical being, but the manifestation of something
Agatha Christie presents human personality under pressure of guilt in characters through external innocence. The guests struggle with guilt internally through their conscious, dreams, and memories. Specifically, Vera and Emily struggle with the most guilt internally but seem to be the most innocent. Vera was deeply in love with a man,
Macarthur had been reflecting on the gramophone’s accusation that he’d committed murder: “Yes, he’d sent Richmond to his death and he wasn’t sorry.” (Christie 83). He had deliberately sent a family friend to his death for having an affair with his wife. Macarthur was shown as being in the wrong for this all throughout the novel, even though he showed no remorse. However, Macarthur was one of the individuals Wargrave chose to kill because he felt that Macarthur had done wrong, this obviously isn’t a positive result and definitely was not what Macarthur had hoped would happen.