Originally and infamously called Ten Little Niggers, then revised to Ten Little Indians: now all modern editions of this 1939 novel by Agatha Christie are titled And Then There Were None. The title referred to the name of the island that is the location of this ‘locked-room’ style murder mystery, where ten characters are invited to stay by a mysterious host, then are killed off inexplicably one by one. The latest versions thus changed the original racial epithets to ‘Soldier’ Island.
In the story, the name of the island in turn refers to a poem hung on the mansion’s wall, and a corresponding set of figurines displayed on the dining table where again the offensive term was altered to ‘soldier’ in modern editions:
Ten Little Soldier Boys
Ten little soldier boys went out to dine;
One choked his little self and then there were Nine.
Nine little soldier boys sat up very late;
One overslept himself and then there were Eight.
Eight little soldier boys travelling in Devon;
One said he’d stay there and then there were Seven.
Seven little soldier boys chopping up sticks;
One chopped himself in halves and then there were Six.
Six little soldier boys playing with a hive;
A bumble bee stung one and then there were Five.
Five little soldier boys going in for law;
One got into Chancery and then there were Four.
Four little soldier boys going out to sea;
A red herring swallowed one and then there were Three.
Three little soldier boys walking in the Zoo;
A big bear hugged one and then there were Two.
Two little soldier boys sitting in the sun;
One got frizzled up and then there was One.
One little soldier boy left all alone;
He went out and hanged himself and then there were None.
As the murder mystery unfolds, and the corpses pile up, each death is in keeping with a line of the poem and another figurine also goes missing each time, whereupon the final line was eventually used as the novel’s replacement title for reasons of political and racial sensitivity.
Agatha Christie and Intertextuality
Agatha Christie often used intertextual references in her novels, from Tennyson’s ‘The Lady of Shallot’ quoted in The Mirror Cracked and Shakespeare’s Macbeth in By The Pricking of My Thumbs to other nursery rhymes as titles such as One, Two, Buckle My Shoe, Five Little Pigs, Hickory Dickory Dock and A Pocketful of Rye. However, in this case the obvious perjorative connotations of her original title and then its equally offensive initial revision resulted in all ethnic references being removed from the text in question.
Moreover, Agatha Christie has been regularly criticized for various xenophobic and anti-Semitic comments in her novels that unfortunately are common to numerous British writings of the 1930s, from the flamboyant ‘hooked-nosed’ men of an early Mr. Quin story to the casual colonial contempt for ‘the natives’ in stories like Death on the Nile or Murder in Mesopotamia.
A Post-Colonial Reading?
While some critics such as Alison Light in her book Forever England: Femininity, Literature, and Conservatism Between the Wars (1991) have been interested in post-colonial readings of her works and the significance of ‘otherness’, there is something interesting happening in And Then There Was None which might in itself be read as a critique of and challenge to racial stereotypes. In contrast to the origins of the poem itself which was as a ‘comic’ piece from minstrel shows, Christie reuses it as a particularly gruesome and emphatic condemnation of the emphatically white British characters.
Each ‘guest’ is revealed to have committed a crime, but only one character openly admits his guilt and displays no remorse for his actions, and his crime is presented as particularly heinous. As a traveling adventurer, he stole food from a native African tribe and then ruthlessly left them to starve. The blasé account of violence against blacks calls to mind the equally callous nursery rhyme, but the sentiments of the latter are overtly overturned.
The villain of the piece is proved to a judge who is presented as an epitome of the white, upper middle-class colonial British ideal - only he is both mad and murderous. He claims his systematic murder of all the other characters for their own previously unpunished crimes is an act of justice, but his killings in line with the poem not only imply unsettling imperial attitudes about superiority, death-dealing and justified massacre, but illustrate the verses are more applicable to apparently ‘civilised’ white people than indigenous races.
The Real Figures of Contempt
This is no heart of darkness, the island is markedly not a dark, exotic, romanticized ‘other’ location. Like most of its inhabitants, it is modern and British and white and wealthy. The rhyme implies hideously that the ethnicities originally named are (in order), greedy, lazy, erratic, careless, foolhardy, foolish, unlucky, stupid and useless, but Christie’s plot actually suggests the reverse. It is her white British cast who are the ones worthy of contempt: they are the idiots, the cuckolds, the wastrels, the murderers and the social scum, and ultimately the poem is specifically about them.
Her character revelations and story line therefore demonstrate the verse to be ironic: it is the members of the supposed ‘superior’ and ‘civilized’ race that are punished for the choices made in their lives, the British social and legal system that is suggested to be lacking, and the epitome of good, noble, English stock that is revealed as the ultimate serial killer. Blackness in the story is in characters’ souls, not their skins, and the racial implications of the poem are upturned and inverted to reflect and indict the immorality of those who might uphold such beliefs and write such lines, rather than lampoon the ethnicities named.
Agatha Christie was a writer of her times, and the racism evident in some of her early books reflects this, but the problematic history of one of her most famous and favourite novels reveals a more complex and self-critical examination of racial constructions. Before its name change, And Then There Was None actually turned the critique in towards the deficiencies of her own culture, society and race and therefore exposed the hypocrisy and offensive nature of racial slurs in poems such as this.
Kim Edwards - Dr. Kim Edwards holds a PhD in literature, and when not teaching English, drama, cabaret or writing, she is a freelance writer, scholar, ...
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