Green 1

Emerald Green
Starry
English 9 H
15 September 2015
ATTWN Summer Reading Expository Essay
In all situations, a person must decide which elements he or she will reveal or keep
hidden from the world. A lesson can be learned from Justice Wargrave, a character from And
Then There Were None by Agatha Christie. This character makes the decisions to expose certain
facts about himself and to conceal those that could draw suspicion towards him.
Justice Wargrave exposed things about himself that would make him seem like everybody
else in the party on Soldier Island. He exposed his job, his reason fir invitation, the story of his
accused crime, and even exposed some vulnerability at times to make him seem like the rest of
them and to draw attention away from himself. He chose to expose certain things because
exposing other things would harm him and his goals. After dinner, on the first night on the
island, a recording played that named and accused the people on the island with a murder
Lawrence John Wargrave, that upon the 10th day of June 1930, you were guilty of the murder of
Edward Seton (Christie 47) Allowing himself to be scrutinized and accused of a crime made
him seem like the others because they were also being scrutinized and accused for their crimes.
If he had not allowed himself to be exposed in that way, he would have stood out as the obvious

instigator behind everything, and things, his plans, would have turned out the way that he
wanted.
Wargrave also chose to conceal certain aspects of himself. He chose to conceal the fact
that he was the brain behind the deaths, the fact that he and Dr. Armstrong had formed an
alliance, the fact that he never died, his true feelings about the situation, and his true intentions.
He has always been fascinated with seeing or causing death I was born with other traits besides
romantic fancy. I have a definite sadistic delight in seeing or causing death (Christie 285) And
I determined to commit not one murder but murder on a grand scale (Christie 285) He has
always had this strong and strange fascination with death and was determined to commit a mass
murder. He chose to conceal those elements from the others on the island because they would
have ruined his plans. Red flags definitely would have definitely woven in their faces if he had
shown sadistic delight or had known that he wanted to commit murder, and they would have
figured out that he was the offender, and he would not have been able to succeed in his plans.
Wargrave chose to keep these elements exposed to or hidden from the rest of the party on
Soldier Island because they would have affected his goals and what he wanted. He did not want
the rest of the party to know certain facts about him because they would have seen and treated
him differently. They would have eventually figured out that he was the perpetrator, and he
would not have been able to inexplicably and anonymously carry out the murder of the isolated
group of people on the island for his own personal form of vigilante justice.
A lesson can be learned from Mr. Lawrence John Wargraves overall persona though.
The author probably created this character this way because she was trying to convey a message
to the reader. Creativity and persistence are definitely a lesson that can be learned from this
character. Creating and executing such a plan takes a tremendous amount of creativity and

persistence, but the lesson that the author was more likely trying to convey to the reader was
probably about trust. Trust is a very powerful thing, and it is very important to decide who to
trust carefully. Everybody on the island was a suspect, but not everyone was the perpetrator.
The characters had to decide on who to trust. Some characters were honest and trustworthy, and
some were not. Wargrave was one of those characters not to be trusted even though most
characters in the book did trust him. Wargrave was not necessarily under a lot of suspicion by
the other characters, but he still ended up being the perpetrator and the exact person that they
were not supposed to trust, and that ended up costing them their lives.
A person must decide which elements that he or she will keep hidden from the world in
all situations. Justice Lawrence Wargrave made those decisions in And Then There Were None
by Agatha Christie. He decided what he wanted the people and Soldier Island to know and what
he did not want them to know. Its just in this case that the underlying element that he did not
want the world to know was that he was U. N. Owen, and he was committing all of the murders
on solider island in his own form of vigilante justice.

Works Cited
Christie, Agatha. And Then There Were None. New York: Harper Collins Publisher, 1940.
Print.