Essay
A* The Murder of Roger Ackroyd Exemplar Essay 3
'The Murder of Roger Ackroyd succeeds in depicting the triumph of good and the restoration of order.' To what extent do you agree with this view?
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MORA practice essay 3'The Murder of Roger Ackroyd succeeds in depicting the triumph of good and the restoration of
order.' To what extent do you agree with this view?
If we are to declare that The Murder of Roger Ackroyd succeeds in depicting the triumph of
good and the restoration of order, then we would perhaps be ignoring Christie’s social commentary
on the universal capacity for violence in the novel and the somewhat lacking punishment of the
criminal. Nevertheless, it could be argued that the mere detection of Dr Sheppard despite
resembling a criminal mastermind together with the exposure of the secrets of King’s Abbot’s
residents is sufficient to support the view that the novel depicts the triumph of good and the
restoration of order, thus fulfilling the primary objective of Golden Age crime fiction.
Indeed, Poirot’s ability to correctly identify the guilt of Dr Sheppard can in itself be seen as
the triumph of good given that no reader could have foreseen such a possibility. It is difficult for a
modern reader to comprehend the shock of Christie’s twist-ending; in the 1920s, crime writers were
bound by a series of ‘ten commandments’ (published by Ronald Knox), one of which prohibited that
the murderer was the narrator of the story. The very fact that Poirot is able to uncover Sheppard’s
guilt, therefore, is a triumph of good and an indication that crime can be solved correctly regardless
of the difficulty in doing so. In Sheppard’s ‘apologia’ at the end of the novel, Christie clearly portrays
him as inherently evil and the antithesis of good, ending the story with the line ‘I wish Hercule Poirot
had never retired from work and come here to grow vegetable marrows’. The ruefulness of the verb
‘wish’ here is indicative of how Sheppard undoubtedly recognises that he has been defeated by
Poirot’s brilliance and we certainly delight in seeing a criminal fall from grace. Poirot, representing all
that is good in the world, henceforth triumphs over the evil of the murderer. The resigned tone
contained in the narrator’s reflection ‘Let it be veronal’ suggests that he will comply with the fate
Poirot has determined for him. Undoubtedly, if Sheppard kills himself, then this can be seen as the
ultimate restoration of order as the criminal is removed as a threat to society (whilst dead), and so
Poirot can be seen as the upholder of stability and order in the isolated village of King’s Abbot. It
must be remembered that such a moral message would have been customary of a novel published
during the Golden Age of crime fiction, a sub-genre in which Christie was considered the ‘Queen of
Crime’. It was intended by Christie and her contemporaries that the triumph of good would provide
reassurance to a reader who has just lived through the terrible conflict of the First World War. As a
result, the nature of the genre would seem to support the view The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
succeeds in depicting the triumph of good and the restoration of order.
However, it could be argued that the ending in the novel represents an example of flawed
justice as the criminal is not completely punished. As in other endings to Christie’s crime mysteries
(with The Murder on the Orient Express being a prime example), the concessional tone contained in
Poirot’s speech ‘I am willing to give you the chance of another way out’ suggests that he is prepared
to do deals with criminals as in many respects he allows Sheppard to escape the conventional
methods of punishment needed for a democratic society to function. The fact is that Sheppard still
retains the choice to decide how he wishes to kill himself or indeed, whether he will do so at all. In
the final analysis it seems extremely unrealistic that Sheppard would not attempt to silence Poirot as
he did to Roger Ackroyd, something which the detective says ‘would not be wise’. A more hardened
reader of crime fiction would certainly see the ending as somewhat fanciful and therefore not a real
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