3rd Term

“MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS”

1- Find out relevant information about Agatha Christie. Write a brief
summary.

Agatha Christie, in full Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, née Miller, (born
September 15, 1890, Torquay, Devon, England and died January 12, 1976,
Wallingford, Oxfordshire), English detective novelist and playwright whose
books have sold more than 100 million copies and have been translated into
some 100 languages.
Educated at home by her mother, Christie began writing detective fiction while
working as a nurse during World War I. Her first novel, The Mysterious Affair
at Styles (1920), introduced Hercule Poirot, her eccentric and egotistic
Belgian detective; Poirot reappeared in about 25 novels and many short
stories before returning to Styles, where, in Curtain (1975), he died. The
elderly spinster Miss Jane Marple, her other principal detective figure, first
appeared in Murder at the Vicarage (1930). Christie’s first major recognition
came with The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926), which was followed by some
75 novels that usually made best-seller lists and were serialized in popular
magazines in England and the United States.

2- Choose the four characters you liked the most. Describe them and explain
their importance in the story.

Hercule Poirot: A retired Belgian police officer. Poirot is Christie's most

famous detective and is known for his short stature and long, curly
moustache. Poirot is very intelligent, extremely aware and instinctual and is a
brilliant detective. The novel is generally written from his perspective and his
character is the most important in history because it is who discovers who
murdered Ratchett.

Mrs. Hubbard: Really Linda Arden, famous actress and grandmother of

Daisy Armstrong. Mrs. Hubbard provides constant interruption and diversion
on the train and is known for her stories about her daughter. Mrs. Hubbard's
compartment is next to Ratchett's.
Edward Henry Masterman: Ratchett's valet, brought into the murder plot by
Hardman. Masterman is not a terribly colorful character, mainly referred to by
his function "the valet." Masterman is very polite and obedient, perhaps even
haughty.

Princess Dragomiroff: A Russian princess. Princess Dragomiroff is a

generally despicable, ugly old lady; her yellow, toad-like face puts off Poirot.
She is the owner of the famous "H" handkerchief found in Ratchett's room and
tells Poirot many lies about the other passenger's identities.

3- Where and when was the novel set?

It was published by the Collins Crime Club on January 1, 1934 and in the
USA. UU By Dodd, Mead and Company later in the same year, with the title
Murder in the Calais coach. It was set on a train hurtling across Europe.

4- Summarize the stages of the story: Exposition, rising action, climax, falling
action, resolution.

Exposition: Hercule Poirot is an intelligent Belgian detective who boards the

Taurus Express in 1925. He rides the train towards Stamboul, when he
arrives, he receives a telegram telling him to go to London. Because of this,
he boards the Orient Express. In this train, he experiences unusual events.
Ratchett tells Poirot that he had been experiencing threats that he would be
killed, and he asked Poirot to work for him. Poirot failures, because he sees
Ratchett as "more malevolent than benevolent." Then, Poirot hears thumps
and cries during the whole night, and discover that a murder did occur so he
then decides to investigate this case.

Rising Action: After Hercule Poirot discovers that a murder has occurred on
the train, he interviews all the passengers and notices a variety of cultures
and personalities because on the train there are people from different
countries. That night, Poirot experiences strange events. He hears Ratchett
talking with the driver during the night and he hears thumps on his door.
When he looks outside his room, he sees a lady in a red kimono walk by it. He
ignores the events and returns to sleep. The following morning, he awakes to
realize that the train is caught in a snowstorm.
Climax: The same morning Poirot is informed by Mr. Bouc that there has
been a murder. Apparently, Ratchett had been wounded 12 times and the
window was left open. Poirot decides to fold evidence to solve this mystery.
Poirot collects some evidence, such as the monogrammed handkerchief, the
fact that the murderer was ambidextrous, and a pipe cleaner. Hercule is very
suspicious of all the passengers and possible suspects that he may have
already met.
Falling action: As Poirot continues on the search for evidence, he comes
across a letter mentioning the kidnapping of Daisy Armstrong. He suspects
that Ratchett may have been Daisy's kidnapper and was killed for revenge.
He interviews all of the passengers, and discovers a common re-occurrence
of the description of a feminine man who may have been the criminal. He
finds two possible solutions. The first one is that Ratchett was killed out of
revenge, and all the people on the train wanted him to pay the price for his
kidnapping. The second solution is that he was killed by someone who
entered from outside the train and left.

Resolution: At the end, Poirot realizes that everyone on the train had
participated in the murder. All the passengers were involved in the murder,
and therefore he could not call out a single murderer. He decided to tell the
police that the murderer was an outsider that killed Ratchett in costume, and
left afterwards. Even though the truth was revealed, it remained hidden to the
public.

5- Who did you think the murder was when you were reading the novel?
Were you able to solve the mystery before Poirot did, or were you surprised
when Poirot revealed the culprits?

When I was reading the novel, first I thought everyone was guilty of the crime,
even Ratchett himself because it could be a plan, it was too much coincidence
that everyone had to do with the past of the murdered person… however the
tests did not match, they were all different.
In the end I saw that what I suspected was true, however I also thought that
the version that was given to others was the best, because Ratchett had done
a lot of damage to that family.

6- If you had to rewrite the story for the 21st century, where would you set it?
Why?

If I rewrote history for the present century, I would place it in Medellin, in the
metro exactly, one night when several personalities were on a tour of that city
and Alvaro Uribe is the murdered person. The detective could be someone
who does not know the history of Colombia. The suspects and culprits would
be from celebrities to government officials, including Colombians in general.
The version that would know the world, would be that the president-elect
murdered him in the moment of he know who was really the person who
defended so much before the world.

7- Poirot relies mainly on psychology and logic to solve crimes. How is

detective work different today?

I think that the detective of today, works according to his morality but also
according to those involved in the crimes, if they are dangerous people or
recognized for managing justice in their own way, the detective does not do
his job well.

8- Why did Agatha Christie set the murder on a train? What does the train
symbolize in the novel?

There is a real event that helped inspire the novel, it was when Agatha
Christie first traveled on the Orient Express in the fall of 1928. A few months
later, in February 1929, an Orient Express was caught by a blizzard near
Çerkezköy, Turkey, being stuck six days.

9- What is the significance of America in the novel?

In 1995, the Mystery Writers of America included it in its list of the hundred
best mystery novels of all time because it was listed as the best of the train
stories. The Orient Express, covered in snow in Yugoslavia, provides the ideal
setting for a mystery novel, and the perfect excuse for a group of international
passengers.

10- Find out some characteristics of the Detective novels and identify them in
this novel

The traditional elements of the detective story are: the seemingly perfect
crime; the wrongly accused suspect at whom circumstantial evidence points;
the bungling of the police; the greater powers of observation and superior
mind of the detective; and the startling and unexpected denouement, in which
the detective reveals how the identity of the culprit was ascertained.
In this play, it can be identified that basically at first there is a suspect person
of the murder. It can also be seen that the detective has a great capacity to
analyze all the passengers and thus obtain answers or evidences that lead
him to the real criminal. Finally, there is an outcome that you as a reader did
not expect and you ends up knowing the truth about the murder.