(full ATTWN spoilers ahead!)
so i was having a conversation about and then there were none and lombard in general a while ago. i thought it was so stupid that killing 21 africans was deemed as āless badā by the narrative than, like, vera killing a kid. it was something i just took for granted as a doylist thing, a byproduct of the racism of the timeā¦
ā¦until i realised, suddenly, that the fact that itās stupid is part of the point.
wargrave is inherently an unreliable narrator. he kills these people based on his own individual definition of justice. heās a white man in the 30sā of course his definition of justice would cast the killing of africans as inherently less villainous than the killing of whites. itās the same definition that casts marston with less guilt because heās ānaturally evilā, and the same definition that casts vera with more for the crime of being a Hysterical Woman.
even if you say these people DID deserve to die, the manner of their deaths is a power fantasy come to life. in spite of its commentary on the ineffectiveness of the justice system, and then there were none isnāt a cathartic story of killers being brought to justice. itās just as much a critique on the the power that the justice system has over individual livesā a massacre committed by a man who has been taught by the system that he has the right to play god, to decide who is deserving, to decide who gets to live and die. thatās how i read it, anyway.
