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A* The Murder of Roger Ackroyd Exemplar Essay 1
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‘The process of detection is more interesting than the characterisation.’ To what extent do you agree with this view of the novel?
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A* ENGLISH LITERATURE - MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD NOTES Characters Notes
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A* ENGLISH LITERATURE - MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD NOTES Critics
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A* ENGLISH LITERATURE - MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD NOTES Depictions of society
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MORA practice essay 1‘The process of detection is more interesting than the characterisation.’ To what extent do you agree
with this view of the novel?
Arguably, the lack of depth given to the victims and suspects in The Murder of Roger
Ackroyd in addition to the participation of all of King’s Abbott’s gossipy villagers in the investigation
establish compelling grounds to advocate the view that the process of detection is more interesting
than the characterisation. Nevertheless, it is vital to consider also whether some characters, such as
Dr Sheppard (representing the criminal mastermind) and Poirot (with his ruthless pursual of the
truth), actually possess interesting personalities which are essential to the development of the
investigation into Roger Ackroyd’s death.
The view that characterisation lacks development in The Murder of Roger of Ackroyd is
supported by Thompson (2013), who has contended that Christie’s characters were not
‘psychological portraits’. It is true that most of the novel’s characters simply serve the purpose of
establishing the clue-puzzle mystery – an effort on the reader’s part to decipher the motives of the
suspects in order to work out who is the real criminal. The fact that even the titular character is just
a stock character – he is presented as ‘a man more impossibly like a country squire than any country
squire could really be’, though someone ‘extremely mean in personal expenditure’ – strongly
suggests that characters merely act as triggers for the investigation. It later transpires that the only
interesting aspects of Ackroyd’s personality are his flaws; the use of the adjective ‘mean’ here
demonstrates how the victim himself is lacking in innocence, which is what provides the motives of
all the novel’s suspects. For example, both Flora and Mrs Ackroyd could have reasonably wanted to
murder their relative in order to escape his financial entrapment. Subsequently, we are not
encouraged to feel any sympathy for him; as recognised by Thompson (2013), ‘no grief’ follows his
passing. To do so would distract the reader from the clue-puzzle investigation and encourage us to
lose ourselves in the life of the victim, which was a theme more commonly found in the psycho-
thriller of the early 20th century.
The idea that all characters had a motive to kill Roger Ackroyd suggests that the
characterisation is secondary to detection, as characters are crafted in a such a way to complicate
the investigation. We are provided with a closed-pool of plentiful suspects in what is a literal parody
of the locked-room mystery; the main body of the novel focuses on exposing the guilt of the novel’s
characters. Poirot recognises how ‘many people in that house stood to benefit by Mr Ackroyd’s
death’; the verb ‘benefit’ here emphasises once again how no mourning meets the passing of the
eponymous victim and how as a result each character makes the process of detection more difficult
on the reader’s part. The nature of such a domestic crime captures the attention of the gossipers in
the village in King’s Abbott, which is important as gossip later becomes essential to the Poirot’s
method of detection. This is clearly demonstrated by the character of Caroline, who ‘should arrive at
the truth by a kind of inspired guesswork’ and is employed on numerous occasions to solve the
mystery. Poirot realises that harnessing the power of gossip in a parochial English village is the key to
finding his murderer, as gossip, unlike the testimony of his suspects, is largely free from unreliable
information, unlike that provided by the suspects, who have a great incentive to lie. Therefore,
gaining an insight into Poirot’s method of detection is one of the most interesting elements of the
novel, as opposed to the characters, who purposely do not lead the detective towards the truth and
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