And Then There Were None is a novel about ten people who are tricked into coming to an island only to be killed. Agatha Christie wrote the novel in 1939. The setting takes place almost exclusively on Indian Island, a small island of rock off the English coast of Devon. The story has no set time. It can take place in the past, present, or future. The mood is suspenseful and thrilling. The tension and suspense gradually increase at each turning point in the plot. The internal conflicts arise when each character is accused of murder. They are in mental agony of what they have done. Also, with each new victim, the surviving characters become more guarded, distrusting, and focused on self-preservation.
             The external conflict is that a murderer is loose among the characters and they are slowly being murdered. A literary technique used in the novel is the motif. The poem the "Ten Little Indians" is used as a motif for the novel. The rhyme gives structure and guides the progression of the novel. The poem tells the story of the deaths of ten Indian boys and ends with the line that gives the novel its title: "and then there were none." Thus, each murder is carried out as close to the rhyme as possible. Because the rhyme has ten Indians in it, the novel has ten major characters whose murders follow the rhyme. The major characters include Justice Lawrence Wargrave, a retired judge. In the course of the story, he is accused of convicting an innocent prisoner to death even though he maintains that the man was guilty and he had never met him before the trial.
             In the conclusion of the novel, Wargrave is the surprise antagonist in that he fakes his death and murders the others. The other nine major characters are the protagonists because the reader remains sympathetic even though the accusations to see them escape alive. Vera Claythorne is a young schoolteacher and is accused of plotting to let a boy drown. Philip Lombard, a former army captain, ...