One thing I Can't Stop Talking About...

I got bored during my English III honors class when my teacher Mrs. Plum recommended the book And Then There Were None to me. Little did she know that I'd liked the book, I loved the book a bit too much. An unhealthy obsession so to speak, especially something so grim. To those of you that don't know, the book's about ten individuals trapped on an island that are picked off one by one by a serial killer that's one of the guests. In a strange turn of events, all of the individuals turned out to have previously murdered someone.

The thing about the book is that through action or inaction, everyone killed someone but not all of them are created equal. You see, some of them feel remorseful of their pasts are are plagued by the weight of their guilt. One in particular, Vera Claythorne, was a particular subject that I found the most fascinating throughout my essays. During may AP Literature class she was the individual that weaved in and out throughout all the papers. She was a symbol for what the books all about: the sense of overwhelming dread and despair.

As the individuals are murdered on the island, eventually only she and a guy named Lombard remained. Everyone else had met their grisly ends (expect for one, but from their perspective only they ere left standing). The thing is, they had vastly different reactions to their fates. Lombard was immune to the feeling of helplessness on the island and believed up until the end that someone other than they were orchestrating the events taking place on the island. He thought he and Vera were going to be okay. Vera however believed that the wrath of the island was rearing its ugly head and that the pair were doomed to fate of the others on the island. After all everyone else died in the way the poem dictated,  and they were all that was left. She stole Lombard's revolver, realizing that if he was the only other person left alive then only he could be the murderer. He attempts to talk Vera down, but fails as he lunges for the weapon and is shot by her numerous times.

Vera, feeling increasing hopeless and guilty about her role in the murder of a child prior to the events of the island ends her own life by hanging herself. In this way, she seals the destiny the poem predicted to the inhabitants of the island. I suppose that's why I believe this book is so spectacular. Even the reader is left as a helpless spectator watching the events on the island play out leading the characters to their eventual ends. While the ending is known to the read from the beginning (the book's titled And Then There Were None, take a wild guess at whose left by the end). That being said, it's so cleverly written and captures the claustrophobic feeling felt by the characters. All the while something feels a bit off and everyone refuses to acknowledge it by hiding under a mask of lies.