And Then There Were None Essay

Tom Dent’s Ritual Murder portrays the phenomenon of black urban crime on New Orleans, Louisiana. A friend kills a friend; Joe murdered James in the Negro bar on a Saturday night while both were drinking. Killing each other happens all the time in “our race on Saturday nights” (Dixon 474). Friends are the victims as well as the perpetrators. The murders and the victims in the play are friends that often murder one another, because “Friends kill each other all the time…unless you have an enemy you can both kill” (480).

All three alliances help the murderer Lawrence Wargrave in some way. The alliance between Lombard, Armstrong, and Blore is noticeably shaky throughout most of the novel, and as a result the acts they do as an alliance are generally small and virtually insignificant to Wargrave. However, there are two major instances with Blore, Armstrong, and Lombard that are particularly

The Armstrong /Wargrave alliance was partially dictated by the fact that they saw each other as "men of reason", one being a doctor and the other a retired judge. They were educated, professional men who were connected with positions of power in normal society, so it stood to reason that the two of them would gravitate toward one another. Of course, Wargrave's OTHER intention was much more sinister, in the sense that he was using Armstrong to help him enact his diabolical plans.

This poem focuses on the lynching of a African American male. The speaker of the poem appears to console a woman who appears to be distressed due to the events taking place. In the first four lines of stanza 1, the speaker says:

After the ellipses, there is a shift back to the poetic “I”. The speaker states that while starring into the sockets of the victim’s skull, he becomes “frozen” with the “pity for the life that was gone”. This transitional sentence separates the scene of the already occurred murder from the present material world. The material world revives around the speaker in the next sentence of the poem. In this massive sentence, Wright dramatically personifies the nature in order to transform the cruel historical scene into the current time. However, the significant transformation of the poetic “I” to the “thing” starts when “the ground gripped” the poet’s feet. From that line, the personified ground captures the speaker, and from the observer of already happened images of the lynching, he revives as a participant in the present scene. In this scene, when the dry bones “melting themselves” into the poet’s bones, he becomes the victim of the lynching. The last minutes of the victim’s life are graphically presented in the third stanza of the poem. The first person’s perspective is a very powerful element, which Wright uses in order to put any reader into the African Americans unlawful suffering from the terror lynching. Furthermore, it is obvious that in the Richard

Violence and murder was also present throughout the novel, mostly caused by Schoolteacher. Schoolteacher burned Sixo, one of the sweet home boys, alive after attempting to escape. Paul A Garner, another sweet home boy, was tortured killed and hung ?headless and feetless? after being caught during escape. And after Sethe told on the boys who stole her breast milk to Mrs. garner, Schoolteacher ordered one of them to ?open up her back?. The beating she received from the nephews left a tree shaped myriad of scars ?with a trunk, branches, and even leaves? (Beloved 16). Another atrocious yet ?justifiable? murder was Sethe?s murder of her baby Beloved. ?Sethe kills her child so that no white man will ever ?dirty her,? so that no young man with ?mossy teeth? will ever hold down the child and suck her breasts? (Barnett 68). Her justification was to save Beloved from being returned to a life of slavery, rape, and murder.

A modern reader might assume that this is wishful thinking, a way to deal psychologically with the Native American situation in a metaphorical Armageddon, or that the poem is an elaborate putdown because the conditions for forgiveness will obviously not be met. Instead, it can be read as a ceremony to make something happen. Native American writers often use traditional ceremony as the basic model of their poems; that is, the type of speech that enacts something rather than describing or persuading.

“I’d go on my two bare feet. But when, with my brother’s jack-knife, I had cut me a long limber horse with a good thick knob for a head…The willow knob with the strap jouncing between my thighs was the pommel and yet the poll of my nickering pony’s head,” says the main character. He basks in the glory of his younger years, and longs for a time when he was oblivious to all of the evils of the world. Containing many simple phrases, the structure of the poem brings an airy vibe to the mystical imagery. “My teeth bared as we wheeled and swished through the dust again. I was the horse and the rider, and the leather I slapped to his rump spanked my own behind,” reads the poem. Descriptive verbs allow the reader to see the character’s movements. The reader is able to easily understand that the character is comparing himself to his horse which he becomes one with. The poem is written in a first person point of view in which the character is within and beside

The reading begins off with describing a mother, Dinah Kirkland and her traumatic experience with the concept of lynching. During the early 1930’s her son went missing after he was arrested and although Dinah knew that her son had been the product of a lynching, she could do nothing about it. She did not know where he was kept, who killed him, or even why he was killed. She contacted the head of the NAACP, and told him the fear she had regarding her son. Members of the African- American society came together to help Kirkland with her efforts, and eventually, Dinah did find the remains of her eighteen-year-old son.

The title for this selection of poems, “Old News”, reflects the theme of racism in this section of Miranda’s memoir. This title is ironic because the problems in these newspaper clips show “new” acts of discrimination against Native Americans. However, the violence depicted in these poems has been recurring for hundreds of years. Since the founding of the American colonies in the 1600s, Native Americans have had their land, families, and sense of safety stolen from them. These European settlers did not understand the culture and behaviors of Native Americans, and, as a

“It says to oblivion: not me!” (Oliver 20) “The Black Snake”. Summarize what happens in your poem here (2 sentences). The poem brings death and the thought of life and death into a brighter light. Preview what poetic elements you will be analyzing in your poem. The deeper meaning of the poem is that death is harsh and we should cherish our lives this is developed using (fill in your three poetic elements.).

Meyer, Michael. "Killings." The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature: Reading, Thinking, Writing. Ninth ed. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2012. 96-108. Print.

Cullen utilizes imagery throughout the poem, to illuminate the racism African Americans endured and impact racism carries. The speaker in the poem is an eight year old in Baltimore. In the first stanza, Cullen describes the child as “heart-filled, head-filled with glee.” This image portrays the speaker as innocent and joyful. Then the speaker notices a boy staring at him, the speaker believes there’s little difference between them, that the kid “was no whit bigger.” The speaker gets a rude awakening after the boy “poked out his tongue.” A seemingly playful meaningless gesture is met with the boy calling the speaker “N****r.” Cullen contrasts these two experiences because it depicts how racism comes out of nowhere and effects those you wouldn’t expect. The last stanza, the speaker “saw the whole Baltimore. The image of seeing is not just visual, but a metaphor for the loss of innocence where the speaker now is exposed to the hate. Cullen masterfully uses imagery so that readers understand the incredible impact that words have, especially when used for hate.

Reading and understanding literature is not as easy as it sounds. Being able to dissect each piece of information and connect it to the overall theme of the story takes lots of rereading and critical thinking. Reading the story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” takes lots of critical thinking and understanding the literature in a different point of view than the average reader would. The theme of this particular story quickly came to mind after initially concluding the reading, the author is trying to convey that nobody can escape death and how thoughts in the mind are so substantial in the consciousness that it can take over the reality. The author comes to this theme by incorporating specific literary elements such a symbol, irony,

The subjects of And Then There Were None help to classify it as part of the horror genre, as Russell claims is how the horror genre is often defined. An unknown murderer strikes fear into their victims as they pick them off one by one in a previously planned order and manner, wanting "something theatrical, impossible" (Christie 287). In chapter 3, a gramophone record accuses each guest of murder, as they each have been responsible for another person's death and their host considers them each guilty. Then, as more guests die, they soon come to a realisation that the killer is one of them and begin to be wary of each other. Therefore, the subject is one reason that And Then There Was None is part of the horror genre.