Essay
A* The Murder of Roger Ackroyd Exemplar Essay 4
‘In spite of the appearance of respectability, Christie exposes a society whose members are essentially corrupt and dishonest.’ To what extent do you agree with this view?
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MORA practice essay 4‘In spite of the appearance of respectability, Christie exposes a society whose members are
essentially corrupt and dishonest.’ To what extent do you agree with this view?
Arguably, the lies and secrecy of the apparently respectable suspects together with the
perhaps flawed methods of investigation employed by both Poirot and the police establish
compelling grounds to advocate the view that Christie exposes a society whose members are
essentially corrupt and dishonest. Nevertheless, it is vital to consider the extent to which Poirot’s
detection represents a triumph of good over corruption and whether the gossiping villagers are
inherently honest and moralistic, working alongside both Poirot and the reader and restore order to
King’s Abbot.
The very nature of the criminal, who seems a kindly and archetypal doctor, strongly suggests
that Christie undermines the appearance of respectability expected of such a quintessential English
village. Beneath the cosiness of the clue-puzzle mystery, in crafting her criminal Christie actually puts
forward a very dystopian message – that everyone in society has a dark secret and are capable of
committing crime under the right circumstances. Instead of being motivated by some sort of born
evil or a criminal ‘gene’, Poirot explains how a mere ‘strain of weakness’ is enough to compel a man
to murder; it is this which allows Sheppard to look respectable on the outside, whilst hiding the dark
secret that he has blackmailed Mrs Ferrars and has murdered Roger Ackroyd. He is corrupted by his
circumstances, tempted by the promise of easy money by exploiting the vulnerable Mrs Ferrars, who
similarly contains a guilty past in the sense that she poisoned her previous husband. Even victims,
therefore, cannot be considered honest and innocent in the novel, which gives further credence to
the view that Christie exposes their respectability as a façade. To conceal his secret, Sheppard lies
and deceives not only Caroline and Poirot, but also the reader themselves. As the narrator of the
novel, we would expect Sheppard to epitomise honesty and reliability – our reaction to the plot in
any fictional work depends on the idea that the narrator is telling the truth. While Sheppard never
actually lies directly in his narration, his language is deliberately ambiguous, as in his description of
the immediate aftermath of his crime when he was ‘wondering if there was anything (he) had left
undone’. Christie clearly masks here what could be ‘left undone’ and subsequently encourages us to
assume that Sheppard is narrating in terms of his attempt to convince Roger not to read the letter,
thus not appearing as anything unusual. In doing so, Sheppard’s dishonesty as a narrator is exposed
in addition to credibility as an innocent doctor, despite his appearance of respectability in the eyes
of both the villagers and the reader. Christie goes even further by presenting Sheppard as something
of a criminal mastermind, masterfully deceiving Poirot for the vast majority of the novel. The
superlative contained in Poirot’s expression ‘my greatest stumbling block’ really emphasises the
threat posed by Sheppard to the detective because of his intuitive decision to use a Dictaphone,
which very nearly led to the wrong man being incriminated for the murder of Roger Ackroyd.
Sheppard’s position as a criminal mastermind again highlights the corruption of the society, as these
men are shown to possess great capacity and skill in terms of criminality which undermines the
credibility of the entire populace. It could even be argued that society gives rise to dishonesty; in the
first chapter Sheppard remarks ‘As a professional man, I naturally aim at discretion’, providing an
insight into the way in which respectability may actually foster crime. If not fostering then society
certainly facilitates the concealment of crime, with the typical ‘stiff upper lip’ of British society
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