Murder on the Orient Express Analysis Project

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Murder on the Orient Express Analysis Project

• By Alexis Smith and Judy Sia

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Vocabulary words

• 1. Hymeneal - of or relating to marriage.
• 2. Pother - commotion/ disturbance.
• 3. Expenditure - expending something.
• 4. Rationalistic - reliance on reason.
• 5. Metaphysics - a branch on of philosophy.

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Vocabulary continued..

• 6. Irremediably - impossible.
• 7. Pseudoscience - theory without scientific
  foundation.
• 8. Cavorting - to prance about.
• 9. Delineation - draw or trace of an outline.
• 10.Verisimilitude - appearing to be true or real.

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Van Dine's Classic Detective Rules

• 1. While solving the mystery, all the clues have
  to be clearly described and all readers should
  have an equal opportunity in solving the case.
• 2. Tricks and/or deceptions are only allowed to
  be set on the reader if done so by the criminal
  on the detective.
• 3. The primary goal is to bring a criminal to
  justice without any love interest.
• 4. The detective and official investigators
  should never end up being the villain, this is
  just a display of deception.
• 5. The criminal of a case should always be
  decided by logical facts and evidence, never by
  false accusations or confessions.

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• 6. An official detective must be present in a
  detective novel, therefore fulfilling his duties
  to gather clue that lead to the verdict of the
  case.
• 7. The crime must be nothing less than a murder.
• 8.The legitimate conflict in the story must
  always be concluded by realistic method.
• 9. There must be only one official detective that
  concludes the case so the reader can identify who
  the initial protagonist is.
• 10. In the end, the criminal has to turn out to
  be someone who played a salient role in the
  overall story.

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11. You can't blame the obvious person. The
outcome has to surprise the reader.12.There can
only be one suspect so the reader can concentrate
on just one person.13.There can be no secret
societies where the murder is premeditated.14.How
the murder was committed and the reason for
wanting to solve it must be realistic.15.When
the crime is solved, the reader should be able to
read the novel again and realize that the
solution had been there since early on in the
story. If they had caught on, they could have
solved the problem by themselves.
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16. The novel can not be too descriptive or have
other issues that have nothing to do with the
crime committed.17.He or she who has committed
the crime in the novel should never have a sense
of guilt. Amateur criminals are the police's
problem, not a detective's.18.The crime can't
end up being an accident. That would throw the
reader off and would leave them
dissatisfied.19.The reason for a crime committed
should have a personal reason on why it was done.
The reader should be able to relate in a way.20.
The novel should have originality. It should not
have the typical things you read in many other
novels such as having evidence like catching a
lie in a lie detector test or figuring out a code
or puzzle leading to the suspect.
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Rule 3

• 3)."There must be no love interest. The business
  in hand is to bring a criminal to the bar of
  justice, not to bring a lovelorn couple to the
  hymeneal altar."
• Explanation
• Throughout Murder on the Orient Express, the
  official detective investigating the case,
  Poiriot, has no love interest, which, according
  to Van Dine's rules, rule 3 describes the exact
  same thing. In any detective story it is
  important for the main person in charge of the
  verdict of the case to stay focused on what
  he/she is doing. If a detective is distracted by
  someone then obviously their full attention is
  not on what it should be on, therefore they are
  not putting all efforts into finding the accurate
  conclusion of the case. Although, he has a bit of
  a liking for willing-British women, he doesn't
  let it distract him and it is never really
  serious enough to be called "love". In the
  beginning of the story Mary Debenham catches his
  eye for a split moment and then in the rest of
  the novel his love life is never really brought
  up.
• From the book
• "She was, he judged, the kind of young woman who
  could take care of herself with perfect ease
  wherever she went. She had poise and efficiency.
  he rather liked the severe regularity of her
  features and the delicate pallor of her skin"
  (Christie 7).

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Rule 7

• 7). There simply must be a corpse in a detective
  novel, and the deader the corpse the better. No
  lesser crime than murder will suffice. Three
  hundred pages is far too much pother for a crime
  other than murder. After all, the reader's
  trouble and expenditure of energy must be
  rewarded.
• Explanation
• In Murder on the Orient Express, M. Ratchett is
  murdered by 12 different people. According to Van
  Dines article, 7 states that the crime must be
  nothing less than a murder, which goes right
  along with Agatha Christies novel. In the book,
  there is an entire chapter on foreshadowing
  leading up to the murder inchapter 2. Poirot
  keeps hearing odd sounds and sees suspicious
  people crossing the halls the night of the crime.
  Below are specific examples of the odd behaviors.
• From the book
• Then came voices-the conductors deferential,
  apologetic a womans insistent and voluble
  (Christie 34)
• He sprang up, opened it and looked out. Nothing.
  But to his right, some distance down the
  corridor, a woman wrapped in a scarlet kimono was
  treating from him. At the other end, sitting on
  his little seat, the conductor was entering up
  figures on large sheets of paper. Everything was
  deathly quiet (Christie 35).

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Rule 8

• 8)."The problem of the crime must he solved by
  strictly naturalistic means. Such methods for
  learning the truth as slate-writing,
  ouija-boards, mind-reading, spiritualistic
  se'ances, crystal-gazing, and the like, are
  taboo. A reader has a chance when matching his
  wits with a rationalistic detective, but if he
  must compete with the world of spirits and go
  chasing about the fourth dimension of
  metaphysics, he is defeated ab initio."
• Explanation
• Murder on The Orient Express relates very
  precisely to Van Dine's procedures in many ways,
  but specifically to rule number eight. Rule 8
  explains how the case must be solved in realistic
  means and in a natural manner. Throughout Murder
  on The Orient Express, Hercule Poirot discovers
  clues and evidence that is present to him on the
  train and uses those sources to conclude who is
  and who isn't guilty of committing the murder. He
  interviews each and every passenger by collecting
  their passports and tickets, and presents them
  with the evidence against them along with asking
  them a series of questions, like their alibi that
  night and what their actions were before going to
  sleep. Some of the passengers were acting odd
  during their interviews, but acted like they knew
  absolutely nothing.
• From the book
• "On the table in front of Poirot was a plan of
  the Istanbul-Calais coach with the names of the
  passengers marked in red ink. The passports and
  tickets were in a pile at one side. There was
  writing paper, ink, pen, and pencils" (Christie
  69).

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Rule 18

• 18)."A crime in a detective story must never turn
  out to be an accident or a suicide. To end an
  odyssey of sleuthing with such an anticlimax is
  to hoodwink the trusting and kind-hearted
  reader."
• Explanation
• Van Dine's rule number 18 goes right along with
  and agrees with Murder on The Orient Express.
  Number 18 basically implies that in any crime in
  a detective case can never turn out to be an
  accident or by someone committing suicide. When
  someone is murdered by someone else it usually
  relates to revenge and justice because the killer
  usually had some type of connection with the
  victim previously. In the book, twelve different
  people kill Ratchett because each and evey one of
  them had a personal connection with the people
  that he had killed in the past, therefore
  revenge. In the same since they fulfilled justice
  because they believed he deserved to die because
  of the terrible things he had done to harmless
  people.
• From the book
• "Well," said said, "you know everything now, M
  Poirot. What are you going to do about i? If it
  must all come out, can't yoyu lat the blame upon
  me and me only?I would have stabbed that man
  twelve times willingly. It wasn't only that he
  was responsible for my daughter's death and her
  child's and that of the other child who might
  have been alive and happy now. It was more than
  that there had been other children kidnapped
  before Daisy, and there might be others in the
  future Society had condemned him- we were only
  carrying out the sentence But it's unnecessary to
  bring all these others into it. All these good
  faithful souls-and poor Michel. And Mary and
  Colonel Arbuthnot-they love each other..."
  (Christie 245).

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Rule 13

• 13). Secret societies, camorras, mafias, et al.,
  have no place in a detective story. A fascinating
  and truly beautiful murder is irremediably
  spoiled by any such wholesale culpability. To be
  sure, the murderer in a detective novel should be
  given a sporting chance but it is going too far
  to grant him a secret society to fall back on. No
  high-class, self-respecting murderer would want
  such odds.
• Explanation
• Van Dines rule 13 expresses how there should
  never be secret societies in a detective novel,
  which goes against Christies murder story. IN
  Murder on the Orient Express, all of the killers
  had a secret connection with the family that
  Ratchett destroyed. They were upset and hurt
  because of what he had done to their loved ones.
  All of the 12 people who murder him knew and
  created a plan to kill him. They all
• From the book
• ....That led me to my scheme of guessing-that
  is, casting each person for a certain part in the
  Armstrong drama much as a producer casts a play.
  Well, that gave me an extremely interesting and
  satisfactory result (Christie 235).

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Rule 13 continued..

• From the book
• When I had heard all the evidence, I leaned back
  and shut my eyes, and began to think. Certain
  points presented themselves to me as worthy
  attention. I enumerated these points to my two
  colleagues. Some I have already elucidated-Such
  as a grease spot on a passport, and so on. I will
  run over the points that remain. The first and
  most important is a remark made to me by M Bouc
  in the restaurant car at lunch on the first day
  after leaving Stamboul-to the effect that the
  company assembled was interesting because it was
  so varied- representing as it did all classes and
  nationalities (Christie 235).

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Summary

• The Murder On The Orient Express, a detective
  novel written by Agatha Christie mostly does fit
  in with Van Dine's rules. This novel wasn't like
  most detective stories and had a lot of
  originality. Poirot, the detective in many of
  Christie's novels, solves his cases using
  different methods of psychology and observing
  with great detail. He's not the typical detective
  who solves his cases with ease. Poirot had to sit
  down and think a lot since the crime was so well
  planned out and that there were 12 people who
  committed murder. Van Dine says that there can
  only be one suspect, but Christie's novel is an
  exception. The execution was well thought out and
  the ending gave the reader two sides to pick
  from, whether it was actual justice or vengeance.
  Christie's novel not only had a great plot, but
  it also kept the reader guessing until the end,
  making it an excellent, enjoyable detective novel.

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• Works Cited
• Christie, Agatha. Murder on the Orient Express.
  Toronto Bantam, 1983. Print.
• Van Dine, S.S. "Twenty Rules For Writing
  Detective Stories." American Magazine Sept.
• 1928 n. pag. Web.