Entry 1- Judgment and Retribution The guests of Soldier Island are all guilty of unpunished crimes, but when a recorded message accuses them of their wrongdoings and people start getting murdered, fear of judgment and retribution becomes prevalent. After the guests were treated to a satisfying dinner, a voice announces, “Ladies and Gentlemen! Silence Please!...You are charged with the following indictments:”(38), and proceeds to call each guest by name and state the crime for which each are responsible. Following the murder of the first three guests and the realization that these passings are not coincidental, they understand that for every two lines of the Ten Little Soldier Boys rhyme, one person will die. When “five frightened people”(173) …show more content…
After the gramophone discloses his secret, the guilt-ridden Dr. Armstrong has a haunting dream bringing him back to the time when he killed his patient while performing an operation under the influence of alcohol, “[e]asy to do a murder with a knife like that. And of course he was doing a murder...”(73). Emily Brent is writing her notebook when, in almost a trance, she inscribes, “THE MURDERER’S NAME IS BEATRICE TAYLOR...”(143). She then awakes with a clear mind and questions in a low voice, “‘Did I write that?...I must be going mad...’”(143). Vera Claythorne suffers from severe recurrent hallucinations that worsen over time. She remembers the death of Cyril and recalls him saying, “‘Miss Claythorne, why can’t I swim to the rocks?’”(72), and although she receives reassurances that “‘Miss Claythorne was wonderful-kept her head-started off swimming after Cyril at once’”(157), she knows the truth: that she allowed him to drown when she could have saved him. When a strand of seaweed is hung in her dark room, Vera recollects, “The sea...The smell of the sea at St. Tredennick....It was the smell there that had been on the beach that day”(178). When the seaweed “touche[s] her throat”, she hallucinates “a wet hand, smelling of the sea” and “[s]he screamed …show more content…
Nursery rhymes are childlike and innocent; at first, Vera Claythorne does not notice the haunting message behind the rhythmic swing when she recites the rhyme, “Ten little soldier boys went out to dine; One choked himself and then there were nine”(27). As guests of Soldier Island, they each have their own copy of Ten Little Soldier Boys which is framed in each room and at first glance, appears to be an innocent theme. After the second death occurs, Dr. Armstrong and Philip Lombard put forth several possible explanations for Mrs. Rogers’ passing. Through their discussion, the correlation between the rhyme, the deaths and the two missing china figures starts to unravel as Dr. Armstrong