Responsibility For The Crime In And Then There Were None
Committing or assoicating in a murder is not exeptable on any circumstance and must be punished for their action. However, sometimes it is difficult to tell whether someone directly killed another person or not. The court system is used to decide on whether or not a person is guilty or not and if they are guilty, the judge decides how much responsibility they held in the crime. In the book And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie, Judge Justice Wargrave kills ten people in order based off of how capable they are. There are degrees of responsibility to those who are involved in a murder. Vera Claythorn is the most culpable in her crime of drowning Cyril Hamilton and General MacAuthor is the least culpable for his crime of sending Author Richmond to war to die.
Vera Claythorn is the most blameworthy for letting a young child, Cyril Hamilton, swim on his own and drown to death. On the island, she claims that is was an accident and she did not save the boy in time while he was drowning. Almost everyone on the island believes her story but not Wargrave. She let the kid swim and drown so Hugo inherit his rich family’s money and she could marry a wealthy man instead of a poor one. She choose to let death happen to find love and receive money. Out of all ten islanders, she was the only one to kill someone to take something from them which makes her hold the most responsibility in her crime. She was also the only one who was panicking and constantly thinking about her murder throught the book. In the novel it states “They had praised her courage and her sangfroid…. But not Hugo. Hugo had just—looked at her…. God, how it hurt, even now, to think of Hugo….” (Christie 192) She is mentally scarred by Hugo denying her love for him for even he did not think what Vera tried to do for them.
General MacAuthor is the least blameworthy for sending Author Richmond off to war to die. There has been many wars all over the world and soldiers die in every battle. Author Richmond signed up to be a soldier and knew he could be injured or die in a battle but it is worth it to serve for his country. General MacAuthor role is to choose who to send off to war whether the person is someone he values or someone he loathes. Even though MacAuthor wanted Richmond to be killed, he did not directly committ a murder or do something Richmond did not want to do. Despite that fact MacAuthor wanted him dead, it is still his job to send soldiers to protect his country and its people. In the book it states “
The similarity between Vera Claythorn and General MacAuthor’s actions is that by both wanted some dead so they tricked their targets to go do something they wanted to do but purposely know they would fail to survive. The difference between these two situations is that Vera wanted the money and power which shows greediness but General MacAuthor wanted to protect his country which could be argued that one man’s life is worth the sacrifice for the whole country
