Key words from And then there were none

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1) Nigger Island P. 5

The reason that I choose this word as my first is first and foremost because that’s the place where the story takes place. Without Nigger Island it wouldn’t be a ‘And then there were none’. This is the island where all the characters are being lured to, the island that you can go to but not come off.

Agatha describes the island like a giant nigger head, though I’m having a hard time picturing it actually, but maybe that’s what happens when you get older, I guess your imagination runs out. Any how, it’s described as a big island with a big house in the middle.
What I reacted most to is the fact that the island has many names. I ‘googled’ the book, hoping to find a decent picture of the island, but all I got was some other covers and there it said “Indian island” and I’ve also seen “solider island”. That got me thinking, is that due to the fact that you can’t use the word nigger now a day? You can be called a racist just by using the Swedish word “negerboll”. Or why would they change the name? Did she maybe write the book and then got it published whit the many different names, or did the publishing company change it when it was considered offending to say the word nigger?

I don’t really know so much more about Nigger island, so I’ll move on to the next word…


2) Death P. 69

Death, you probably wonder why I choose this word. I can’t give you a decent answer, when I looked through the book my eyes got caught on the word death.

Death can mean so many different things to different people. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing. Death could mean the beginning of something new, I don’t know how philosophical I can be in this assignment, but bare with me.

There are, according to me, two ways of speaking of death.
The first one is more of a spiritual way, or maybe the correct word is philosophical. A bad thing might happen to you, I’m not talking about death to another human being now, but maybe a broken heart (where I am the expert) or maybe a betrayal by a dear friend. These are things that happen to almost everyone at sometime, and it can happen to one in each side of the scale. At that time you, or a least I do, feel broken. Totally torn up inside, it might even feel like your souls have been scratched. You can say that your inside, your feelings are dead.
But then, when you’ve reached the bottom it can only go upwards. From that bad experience you can grow, and learn something. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger right? I once saw the lion king and there they claimed the fire to be a killer, but then Simba said that what grows up from where the fire have blown past, is going to be better and more fertile.

I’m sorry if I’m being to indistinctive in my writing, but I’ll hope you understand and don’t think that I’m a total weirdo.

The other sides of death that I was referring to is the death that you automatically think of when you hear the word death. Death to a person, or animal for that sake. Death is a terrible thing when it strikes you, losing a loved one is a thing that you can never prepare yourself for.
Death has a great deal to do with the book, since there are 10 corpses on Nigger Island. They were all brought there to make amends for their crimes, an eye for an eye. But is that the right punishment?
Two wrongs don’t make one right.
Ghandi once said "An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind"



3) Love P 67

Love, just as death, is to me a word with different meanings.
Love is indeed a very strong word, and at the same time a word that’s used to often in today’s society.
People then to use the word love as if it meant nothing, I hear little girls saying “oh I love that boy, and it’s so strange because we’ve only been going out for a week”. That’s not love. We use the word love today as if love and like were the same thing. I write this with the knowledge that I might sound very old –fashioned, though this is really what I think.
My sisters often ask me whether I’ve ever been in love, and I always answer them “no I haven’t. Sure I’ve had my share of crushes but I’m too young to have experienced true love.” I don’t say that I’m expecting some sort of fairy tale love where my knight in shining armour is out there some where waiting for me. But I do know that I’ve not been really in love.

Some people believe in destiny. Maybe there is such a thing, maybe every new meeting has something to teach us. Many people around me are in such a rush finding there true love, well I believe that everything has its own time.
But true love is a beautiful thing; I’ve heard love stories of people that have literally found love at first sight. And also people who have been married for 70 years and still say that every day with their love feels like a new first date.
And, I said earlier that everything has its own time, I’ve read about a couple that got married at the age of 75!
I feel like I lost track of what I really wanted to say. Love yeah; there is many forms of love. It can be love to a family member, which is unconditional, and there’s love to a pet. There’s love to a friend or a lover.

But what happens when love turns into obsession. I’ve heard many examples of people thinking “if I cant have him/her then no one can” and that’s is the people that can murder the one that they “love” just because they left them.
And it can be love to drugs, alcohol or food. Or maybe that’s more of an addiction than love.

When Agatha speaks of love in the book she is referring to the love between one of the lead characters Vera Claythorne and another unknown character named Hugo. Very is the nanny for Hugo’s child Cyril. According to Vera everything would be better if Cyril wasn’t around, so she allows him to swim in deep water even though she knows that he’ll drown.
That is also an example of love where one part goes to far.

But overall love is a great thing; it’s documented that human beings, and mostly small children, can die without touch and love from a parent. It sounds tacky but we really can’t live without love.
Now lets move on to the next word.

4) Coincident P. 104

One question that I know have been in my head for a long time is; is there such a thing as coincidence? Or do things happen for a reason?
I spoke a little of coincidence when I was talking about love. We often associate love and coincidence. Maybe there really is a plan written for us, and all that we can do is sit back and watch it happen. Or maybe we can participate in changing, and writing the story of our lives.

I often speculate whether there is such a thing as fate, or was that which just happened a coincidence. Was it just a coincidence that I missed the bus home buy a minute and then on my way home (walking) I meat my prospect?
I guess that if you really believe that there’s no such thing as fate, coincidence is what you believe in, but me my self am having a hard time believing that coincidence is all there is.

Coincidence in the book doesn’t have that much of a meaning to the whole concept. Or maybe the characters asked them self the question “why did this happen to me? Why me of all people”
I think that the word coincidence and the word if are connected. If I hadn’t done that, what would have happened? If I wouldn’t have gone there, would that have happened then?

Is there such a thing as coincidence?


5) Darkness P. 103

This word, unlike some of the other words that I choose, doesn’t have that much of a meaning to the book. Though I choose it because there’s a lot to write about it, and darkness is sometimes a beautiful thing.

I’ll start off by describing the meaning of it in the book. I found the word in page 103 and there it’s used as a word of description, it says “Blore disappeared into a cavernous of darkness” Scary stories and thrillers often contain the word darkness. That’s rather obvious since bigger part of the human population associates darkness with fear and unknowingness.
Well one cant’ blame them; I must admit that even I have been, or maybe I should write I am, afraid of the darkness sometimes. When you are home alone and you constantly hear strange noises even though you are the only one in the house.
In the scary movies; the lead character always hear those strange noises, and they always walk towards them even though they know that the murderer probably will be there. But then we should ask ourselves this question; why do we keep watching these horror movies when we know that we’ll be terrified? I myself know that its cause of the excitement, your nerves are on the edge of bursting for each step that the character takes towards that noise.

I’ve read some where that when we get afraid, from watching a scary movie, our body sends out the same hormone as when we are in love. Maybe that’s why we keep watching these horror movies.

But I think that the darkness can be a beautiful thing as well. My family owns a place in Gammalkroppa, just outside Filipstad. And in the summers I always walk down to the water at night just to watch the darkness reflecting over the water. The sea is turned dark blue and the sky is almost black, it’s so beautiful!
And if you sit on a beach whit someone special at night with just a bonfire...