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Summary A* ENGLISH LITERATURE - MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD NOTES Characters Notes
A* ENGLISH LITERATURE - MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD NOTES Characters Notes
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CharactersAgatha Christie has faced much criticism for not having "psychologically complexed
characters" (Thompson) or characters which could be viewed as being "flat". Characters
merely act as triggers for the investigation and plot. However, Christie avoiding complexed
characters for a reason by reducing people to a handful of simple traits she provided readers
with predictable suspects.
They are simply devices intended to accentuate the surprise of Christieʼs dramatic twist-
ending, a finale that could not have been achieved without the uniquely intuitionist process of
detection.
Caroline
Christie uses her gossiping characters – principally among them being Caroline – to show
how normal people can successfully help the detective bring a murderer to justice. Poirot
and his ‘armyʼ of gossips can be seen as a force working for the triumph of good;
Carolineʼs ideas about the case sometimes prove to be even more accurate than Poirotʼs.
It is no surprise that she is considered a precursor to Miss Marple, with both acting as
amateur consulting detectives who prove invaluable to the detection of the criminal.
The Theory of Pierre Bayard in Qui a Tue Roger Ackroyd states that the doctor is shielding
the real culprit, Caroline, who has killed Ackroyd to protect Sheppard from the
consequences of his blackmailing activities. Her rampant nosiness is a cover for her
desperate desire to know the progress of the investigation.
Christie herself viewed Caroline as a forefront runner for the role of Miss Marple. Unlike
Mrs Marple, Caroline can be misled and distracted by a false trail; at one point one offered
two separate snippets of a new scandal, "she visibly wavered much as a roulette board
might coyly hover between two numbers".
From Caroline, he learns that Ralph Paton met with a mystery woman in the woods, which
paves the way for his conclusion that Ralph was married to Ursula Bourne, so couldnʼt
have committed the crime.
Caroline also allows information to come to her without leaving her home, employing a
network of servants, deliverymen, and other gossipy women. Like Miss Marple, Caroline
has an uncanny ability for understanding human nature—people's secret loves, fears, and
motives—that comes naturally, not from special training or formal expertise. And like Miss
Marple, Caroline often arrives at the truth through associations and intuition.
She is arguably the character who represents Agatha Christie's ideal reader.
From the very beginning Caroline herself acts as a detective which annoys her
scientifically orientated brother as she uses subjective forms of knowledge usually
associated with an inferior feminine position.
, Carolineʼs being a spinster, and as such having no identity, furthermore, evokes a male
fear of the unmarried, and therefore unsubdued, placeless female. She challenges male
control of female sexuality, since activity and self-assertion are male prerogative, and
females who attempt to transgress gender roles are doomed to be annihilated. When it
comes to women, the male-dominated system is essentially the same: the female of the
species should be suppressed as much as possible. Here we are reminded of Cassandra
from mythology whose gift of explaining divine prophecy was negated by an act of the
male. She received the gift of prophecy from Apollo, who was enamoured of her. However,
as she slighted him, the god declared that no trust should be placed in her prophecies.
While the doctor situates her on the side of irrationality and foolishness because she
disrupts the ways in which femininity and masculinity have been previously construed,
Poirotʼs evaluation of Carolineʼs detective skills is remarkable: "woman observe
subconsciously a thousand little details, without knowing that they are doing so. Their
subconscious mind adds these little things together - and they call the result intuition".
Roger Ackroyd
‘a man more impossibly like a country squire than any country squire could really beʼ
"extremely mean in personal expenditure"
It transpires later on in the novel that the only interesting aspects of Ackroyd's personality
are his flaws as he is cast as someone "extremely mean in personal expenditure"
suggesting that his character traits only act as triggers for the investigation. As stated by
Thompson "no grief" follows his passing as to do so would distract the reader from the
investigation losing ourselves in the victim - something done in psychological thrillers
instead of detective fiction.
He is an example of how it can be argued that criminals are rarely innocent.
The very fact that Roger Ackroyd, the central victim of the novel, is guilty of bringing about
the misery of most characters in his household gives credence to the view that those
affected by crime are rarely innocent. As with most crime fiction written during the Golden
Age, there is little focus on his characterisation; his only trait relevant to the plot is that he
is ‘extremely mean in personal expenditureʼ. The adjective ‘meanʼ later proves to be crucial
to the case as he provides many others with a credible motive to kill him – namely, that of
gaining from his will. The reader feels little sympathy for his passing, with his death
serving only as a trigger for the investigation expected of the classic clue-puzzle mystery.
Mrs Ferrars
The crime that actually propels the narrative is not the one alluded to in the title, but one that
predates the events of the novel and is entangled with it. The death of Mr Ferrars which occurs
a year before the narrative begins. Immediately a conspiracy is introduced of Mrs Ferrars whom
it is believed may have poisoned her brute of a husband and them committed suicide as a result
of her remorse. Her death also drives the narrative.
Ralph Payton
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