Symbols/Themes
Mah Jong
Mah Jong is a traditional Chinese game, somewhat similar to bridge or gin rummy, that was very
popular in England at the time.
During the game, Sheppard gets a “perfect hand,” and, encouraged by his victory in the game,
begins spilling secrets about his friendship with Hercule Poirot. The Mah Jong game could be
interpreted as a symbol of the secrets that all people—especially the suspects in a murder case!
—are hiding. As in a game of Mah Jong, these secrets eventually come to light, and sometimes,
when the murderer has a “perfect hand” (i.e., has committed a seemingly “perfect crime”), he
feels an unconscious need to spill his secret to other people. (Itʼs worth noting that Agatha
Christie often uses games to symbolise charactersʼ psychological attributes—in Cards on the
Table, for example, Hercule Poirot solves a case by studying how the suspects play bridge.)
When the game of Mah Jong is played Christie conjures precisely the inescapable banality of
Kings Abbot Society.
Little Grey Cells Representing Poirot's Detective Method
The little grey cells to which he refers could symbolise Poirotʼs unique style of detection, a
combination of logical deduction, hands-on investigation, and intuition.
Universal Capability For Violence
“Every one of you in this room is concealing something from me.” Poirotʼs claim is arguably the
single most important sentence in the book, summing up Christieʼs belief that everyone—even
nice, ordinary-seeming people—has a dark secret, and, furthermore, that everyone, under the
right circumstances, is capable of committing a crime.
Gossip
Dr. Sheppard, the narrator, constantly complains about how irritating, inaccurate, and pointless
gossip can be. And yet, over the course of the book, Christie shows how gossip can be a
potentially important tool of detection. Counterintuitively, gossip can be more reliable than
regular, face-to-face testimony. At the very beginning of the book, Sheppardʼs sister Caroline
learns about the death of Mrs. Ferrars almost as soon as it happens, thanks to the power of
gossip: Mrs. Ferrarsʼs parlourmaid passes the message on to other people, who alert Caroline.
The useful feature of gossip is that those who partake in it have no strong motive to lie
therefore the information is usually accurate.
On a typical day in a small English town, Christie suggests, gossip might not be the best source
of information. But in the midst of a murder case, when everybody is hiding something, gossip
can be one of the best ways of learning the truth.
Poirot uses Carolineʼs network of gossips to determine whether Ralph Paton owns boots, and he
learns from Caroline that Ralph had met with a mysterious woman in the woods, paving the way
for his conclusion that Ralph was married to Ursula Bourne, and couldnʼt have committed the
murder. The knowledge that Ralph was walking through the woods is a particularly strong
example of why gossip is so important to the art of detection. Previously, Dr. Sheppard
Mah Jong
Mah Jong is a traditional Chinese game, somewhat similar to bridge or gin rummy, that was very
popular in England at the time.
During the game, Sheppard gets a “perfect hand,” and, encouraged by his victory in the game,
begins spilling secrets about his friendship with Hercule Poirot. The Mah Jong game could be
interpreted as a symbol of the secrets that all people—especially the suspects in a murder case!
—are hiding. As in a game of Mah Jong, these secrets eventually come to light, and sometimes,
when the murderer has a “perfect hand” (i.e., has committed a seemingly “perfect crime”), he
feels an unconscious need to spill his secret to other people. (Itʼs worth noting that Agatha
Christie often uses games to symbolise charactersʼ psychological attributes—in Cards on the
Table, for example, Hercule Poirot solves a case by studying how the suspects play bridge.)
When the game of Mah Jong is played Christie conjures precisely the inescapable banality of
Kings Abbot Society.
Little Grey Cells Representing Poirot's Detective Method
The little grey cells to which he refers could symbolise Poirotʼs unique style of detection, a
combination of logical deduction, hands-on investigation, and intuition.
Universal Capability For Violence
“Every one of you in this room is concealing something from me.” Poirotʼs claim is arguably the
single most important sentence in the book, summing up Christieʼs belief that everyone—even
nice, ordinary-seeming people—has a dark secret, and, furthermore, that everyone, under the
right circumstances, is capable of committing a crime.
Gossip
Dr. Sheppard, the narrator, constantly complains about how irritating, inaccurate, and pointless
gossip can be. And yet, over the course of the book, Christie shows how gossip can be a
potentially important tool of detection. Counterintuitively, gossip can be more reliable than
regular, face-to-face testimony. At the very beginning of the book, Sheppardʼs sister Caroline
learns about the death of Mrs. Ferrars almost as soon as it happens, thanks to the power of
gossip: Mrs. Ferrarsʼs parlourmaid passes the message on to other people, who alert Caroline.
The useful feature of gossip is that those who partake in it have no strong motive to lie
therefore the information is usually accurate.
On a typical day in a small English town, Christie suggests, gossip might not be the best source
of information. But in the midst of a murder case, when everybody is hiding something, gossip
can be one of the best ways of learning the truth.
Poirot uses Carolineʼs network of gossips to determine whether Ralph Paton owns boots, and he
learns from Caroline that Ralph had met with a mysterious woman in the woods, paving the way
for his conclusion that Ralph was married to Ursula Bourne, and couldnʼt have committed the
murder. The knowledge that Ralph was walking through the woods is a particularly strong
example of why gossip is so important to the art of detection. Previously, Dr. Sheppard
