PATTERNS IN MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS

Year 2023, Volume: 2 Issue: 1, 11 - 16, 30.06.2023

L. Filiz Özbaş

Abstract

The novel takes place in a narrow space where everyone knows each other. Space is narrow and defined within the limits of the village. Time is also very important in this novel. In this work where events beginin media res are conveyed an alternating order by going back to the beginning and moving toward the end. In this novel where solution depends on time, especially on the time of the murder, there are “two dimensions of time”. The story begins with “near past” and develops with Poirot’s taking the matter in his hands. “Past” comprises Mrs. Farer’s death and and the events related with Ackroyd. “Now” is the time dimension when the murder is solved, and the murderer confesses. When the sequence of events that take place in the novel are listed within the past-now dimensions of time, there appears a symmetrical pattern. There are twenty-seven sections in the novel. The plot is built around a love triangle. Mrs. Ferars who forms one corner of the triangle has tried to unite with Roger Ackroyd by killing her husband, but, with the intervention of Doctor James Shepard, kills herself. At the same time, with his intervention, the doctor functions just like Mrs. Ferars, and by killing Roger Ackroyd in the third corner of the triangle he condemns himself. There are fifteen characters in the novel. The fact that twelve of them are witnesses brings to mind the functioning of the jury of twelve in the British legal system, and the rest are the victim, the murderer and the detective wo are essential in the functioning of the jury system. The biggest diversion in the novel is that the narrator is the murderer, and he tells the truth. Except in the section the novel which is not conveyed to the reader the doctor puts into words everything that happens objectively. Solution is reached by, first, the creation of events where there is more than one relationship between what is shown and what is meant and then clarifying what is meant by revealing g the truth.

Keywords

Murder, characters, space, time, diversion, solution.

References

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