The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
Stephanie Sheaffer Sheaffer 1
Mrs. Petrunek
English 12 CP
4 January 2013 The Murder of Roger Ackroyd Agatha Christie has written many mystery novels, but none of them are like The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. A surprising realness when in the end, the narrator is the murderer. From the very beginning to the very last sentence the reader will be hooked. “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd proved to be the first in a long string of superlative and highly original mystery novels that made Christie’s name synonymous with the mystery story.(Breznau n.p.)” Agatha Christie’s Murder of Roger Ackroyd is a traditional example of the mystery genre. Evidence of Murder of Roger Ackroyd as a mystery include the authors use of unreliable narrator, murder, and suspense. The next paragraph focuses on the evidence of the authors use of a unreliable narrator. In mystery stories, typically the reader has an idea of who the suspect is. In The Murder of Roger Ackroyd Christie uses an unreliable narrator. Christie points this idea in the readers mine that many of the characters wanted to murder Roger Ackroyd. But the murderer is the narrator and that is the whole mystery and unreliability in the novel. “The story is told totally in his words, and Christie contrived his narration so that nothing he says is untrue. (H.R.F. Keating n..p)” The narrator, Dr. Sheppard, says this “it is odd how, when you have a secret belief of your own which you do not wish to acknowledge, the voicing of it by someone else will rouse you to a fury of denial. (Christie 2)” But Christie does not let the reader in on the secret until the very end. “Only occasionally does she arrange his prose in such a way as to conceal from the reader the passage of a period of time. (H.R.F. Keating n..p)” Christie is clever by working around details about Sheppard. The reader would never suspect the murderer is the narrator, someone the reader trust in the story. “Everyone concerned in them has something to
Mrs. Petrunek
English 12 CP
4 January 2013 The Murder of Roger Ackroyd Agatha Christie has written many mystery novels, but none of them are like The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. A surprising realness when in the end, the narrator is the murderer. From the very beginning to the very last sentence the reader will be hooked. “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd proved to be the first in a long string of superlative and highly original mystery novels that made Christie’s name synonymous with the mystery story.(Breznau n.p.)” Agatha Christie’s Murder of Roger Ackroyd is a traditional example of the mystery genre. Evidence of Murder of Roger Ackroyd as a mystery include the authors use of unreliable narrator, murder, and suspense. The next paragraph focuses on the evidence of the authors use of a unreliable narrator. In mystery stories, typically the reader has an idea of who the suspect is. In The Murder of Roger Ackroyd Christie uses an unreliable narrator. Christie points this idea in the readers mine that many of the characters wanted to murder Roger Ackroyd. But the murderer is the narrator and that is the whole mystery and unreliability in the novel. “The story is told totally in his words, and Christie contrived his narration so that nothing he says is untrue. (H.R.F. Keating n..p)” The narrator, Dr. Sheppard, says this “it is odd how, when you have a secret belief of your own which you do not wish to acknowledge, the voicing of it by someone else will rouse you to a fury of denial. (Christie 2)” But Christie does not let the reader in on the secret until the very end. “Only occasionally does she arrange his prose in such a way as to conceal from the reader the passage of a period of time. (H.R.F. Keating n..p)” Christie is clever by working around details about Sheppard. The reader would never suspect the murderer is the narrator, someone the reader trust in the story. “Everyone concerned in them has something to