Murder on the Orient Express Analysis Project

1. Murder on the Orient Express Analysis Project By: Alexis Smith and Judy Sia

2. Vocabulary words 1. Hymeneal - of or relating to marriage. 2. Pother - commotion/ disturbance. 3. Expenditure - expending something. 4. Rationalistic - reliance on reason. 5. Metaphysics - a branch on of philosophy.

3. Vocabulary continued.. 6. Irremediably - impossible. 7. Pseudoscience - theory without scientific foundation. 8. Cavorting - to prance about. 9. Delineation - draw or trace of an outline. 10.Verisimilitude - appearing to be true or real.

4. Van Dine's Classic Detective Rules • 1. While solving the mystery, all the clues have to be clearly described and all readers should have an equal opportunity in solving the case. • 2. Tricks and/or deceptions are only allowed to be set on the reader if done so by the criminal on the detective. • 3. The primary goal is to bring a criminal to justice without any love interest. • 4. The detective and official investigators should never end up being the villain, this is just a display of deception. • 5. The criminal of a case should always be decided by logical facts and evidence, never by false accusations or confessions.

5. 6. An official detective must be present in a detective novel, therefore fulfilling his duties to gather clue that lead to the verdict of the case. • 7. The crime must be nothing less than a murder. • 8.The legitimate conflict in the story must always be concluded by realistic method. • 9. There must be only one official detective that concludes the case so the reader can identify who the initial protagonist is. • 10. In the end, the criminal has to turn out to be someone who played a salient role in the overall story.

6. 11. You can't blame the obvious person. The outcome has to surprise the reader.12.There can only be one suspect so the reader can concentrate on just one person.13.There can be no secret societies where the murder is premeditated.14.How the murder was committed and the reason for wanting to solve it must be realistic.15.When the crime is solved, the reader should be able to read the novel again and realize that the solution had been there since early on in the story. If they had caught on, they could have solved the problem by themselves.

7. 16. The novel can not be too descriptive or have other issues that have nothing to do with the crime committed.17.He or she who has committed the crime in the novel should never have a sense of guilt. Amateur criminals are the police's problem, not a detective's.18.The crime can't end up being an accident. That would throw the reader off and would leave them dissatisfied.19.The reason for a crime committed should have a personal reason on why it was done. The reader should be able to relate in a way.20. The novel should have originality. It should not have the typical things you read in many other novels such as having evidence like catching a lie in a lie detector test or figuring out a code or puzzle leading to the suspect.

8. Rule #3 • 3)."There must be no love interest. The business in hand is to bring a criminal to the bar of justice, not to bring a lovelorn couple to the hymeneal altar." • Explanation: • Throughout Murder on the Orient Express, the official detective investigating the case, Poiriot, has no love interest, which, according to Van Dine's rules, rule #3 describes the exact same thing. In any detective story it is important for the main person in charge of the verdict of the case to stay focused on what he/she is doing. If a detective is distracted by someone then obviously their full attention is not on what it should be on, therefore they are not putting all efforts into finding the accurate conclusion of the case. Although, he has a bit of a liking for willing-British women, he doesn't let it distract him and it is never really serious enough to be called "love". In the beginning of the story Mary Debenham catches his eye for a split moment and then in the rest of the novel his love life is never really brought up. • From the book: • "She was, he judged, the kind of young woman who could take care of herself with perfect ease wherever she went. She had poise and efficiency. he rather liked the severe regularity of her features and the delicate pallor of her skin" (Christie 7).

9. Rule #7 • 7). “There simply must be a corpse in a detective novel, and the deader the corpse the better. No lesser crime than murder will suffice. Three hundred pages is far too much pother for a crime other than murder. After all, the reader's trouble and expenditure of energy must be rewarded.” • Explanation: • In Murder on the Orient Express, M. Ratchett is murdered by 12 different people. According to Van Dine’s article, #7 states that the crime must be nothing less than a murder, which goes right along with Agatha Christie’s novel. In the book, there is an entire chapter on foreshadowing leading up to the murder inchapter 2. Poirot keeps hearing odd sounds and see’s suspicious people crossing the halls the night of the crime. Below are specific examples of the odd behaviors. • From the book: • “Then came voices-the conductor’s deferential, apologetic; a woman’s insistent and voluble” (Christie 34) • “He sprang up, opened it and looked out. Nothing. But to his right, some distance down the corridor, a woman wrapped in a scarlet kimono was treating from him. At the other end, sitting on his little seat, the conductor was entering up figures on large sheets of paper. Everything was deathly quiet” (Christie 35).

10. Rule #8 • 8)."The problem of the crime must he solved by strictly naturalistic means. Such methods for learning the truth as slate-writing, ouija-boards, mind-reading, spiritualistic se'ances, crystal-gazing, and the like, are taboo. A reader has a chance when matching his wits with a rationalistic detective, but if he must compete with the world of spirits and go chasing about the fourth dimension of metaphysics, he is defeated ab initio." • Explanation: • Murder on The Orient Express relates very precisely to Van Dine's procedures in many ways, but specifically to rule number eight. Rule #8 explains how the case must be solved in realistic means and in a natural manner. Throughout Murder on The Orient Express, Hercule Poirot discovers clues and evidence that is present to him on the train and uses those sources to conclude who is and who isn't guilty of committing the murder. He interviews each and every passenger by collecting their passports and tickets, and presents them with the evidence against them along with asking them a series of questions, like their alibi that night and what their actions were before going to sleep. Some of the passengers were acting odd during their interviews, but acted like they knew absolutely nothing. • From the book: • "On the table in front of Poirot was a plan of the Istanbul-Calais coach with the names of the passengers marked in red ink. The passports and tickets were in a pile at one side. There was writing paper, ink, pen, and pencils" (Christie 69).

11. Rule #18 • 18)."A crime in a detective story must never turn out to be an accident or a suicide. To end an odyssey of sleuthing with such an anticlimax is to hoodwink the trusting and kind-hearted reader." • Explanation: • Van Dine's rule number 18 goes right along with and agrees with Murder on The Orient Express. Number 18 basically implies that in any crime in a detective case can never turn out to be an accident or by someone committing suicide. When someone is murdered by someone else it usually relates to revenge and justice because the killer usually had some type of connection with the victim previously. In the book, twelve different people kill Ratchett because each and evey one of them had a personal connection with the people that he had killed in the past, therefore revenge. In the same since they fulfilled justice because they believed he deserved to die because of the terrible things he had done to harmless people. • From the book: • "Well," said said, "you know everything now, M Poirot. What are you going to do about i? If it must all come out, can't yoyu lat the blame upon me and me only?I would have stabbed that man twelve times willingly. It wasn't only that he was responsible for my daughter's death and her child's and that of the other child who might have been alive and happy now. It was more than that: there had been other children kidnapped before Daisy, and there might be others in the future Society had condemned him- we were only carrying out the sentence But it's unnecessary to bring all these others into it. All these good faithful souls-and poor Michel. And Mary and Colonel Arbuthnot-they love each other..." (Christie 245).

12. Rule #13 • 13). “Secret societies, camorras, mafias, et al., have no place in a detective story. A fascinating and truly beautiful murder is irremediably spoiled by any such wholesale culpability. To be sure, the murderer in a detective novel should be given a sporting chance; but it is going too far to grant him a secret society to fall back on. No high-class, self-respecting murderer would want such odds.” • Explanation: • Van Dine’s rule #13 expresses how there should never be secret societies in a detective novel, which goes against Christie’s murder story. IN Murder on the Orient Express, all of the killers had a secret connection with the family that Ratchett destroyed. They were upset and hurt because of what he had done to their loved ones. All of the 12 people who murder him knew and created a plan to kill him. They all • From the book: • “....That led me to my scheme of ‘guessing’-that is, casting each person for a certain part in the Armstrong drama much as a producer casts a play. Well, that gave me an extremely interesting and satisfactory result” (Christie 235).

13. Rule #13 continued.. • From the book: • “When I had heard all the evidence, I leaned back and shut my eyes, and began to think. Certain points presented themselves to me as worthy attention. I enumerated these points to my two colleagues. Some I have already elucidated-Such as a grease spot on a passport, and so on. I will run over the points that remain. The first and most important is a remark made to me by M Bouc in the restaurant car at lunch on the first day after leaving Stamboul-to the effect that the company assembled was interesting because it was so varied- representing as it did all classes and nationalities” (Christie 235).

14. Summary The Murder On The Orient Express, a detective novel written by Agatha Christie mostly does fit in with Van Dine's rules. This novel wasn't like most detective stories and had a lot of originality. Poirot, the detective in many of Christie's novels, solves his cases using different methods of psychology and observing with great detail. He's not the typical detective who solves his cases with ease. Poirot had to sit down and think a lot since the crime was so well planned out and that there were 12 people who committed murder. Van Dine says that there can only be one suspect, but Christie's novel is an exception. The execution was well thought out and the ending gave the reader two sides to pick from, whether it was actual justice or vengeance. Christie's novel not only had a great plot, but it also kept the reader guessing until the end, making it an excellent, enjoyable detective novel.

15. Works Cited Christie, Agatha. Murder on the Orient Express. Toronto: Bantam, 1983. Print. Van Dine, S.S. "Twenty Rules For Writing Detective Stories." American Magazine Sept. 1928: n. pag. Web.