ABC Murders

2 Pages 581 Words

Agatha Christie’s “The A.B.C. Murders” and Kazuo Ishiguro’s “The Remains of The Day” are alike and different in many ways. Both novels that are centered on English characters or themes. The A.B.C. Murders focuses on the murders and how and why they’re being committed, and The Remains of The Day focuses on status and tradition. While one pokes fun at English customs and traditions the other may put those same customs and traditions on a pedestal.
The A.B.C. Murders were centered on a group of murders that took place in England. While the detective himself was not English his counterparts are. The murderer himself was English as well as all those that played an active role in the mystery. The basic theme of the novel was to understand how and why these murders were being committed. To understand that one must understand how to gain this information and our protagonist, Mr. Hercule Poirot, knew how to do that. Being that he had to question a lot of residents in the area, who all of whom happened to be English, Poirot knew how to address them. “ You yourself are English and yet you do not seem to appreciate the quality of the English reaction to a direct question. It is invariably one of suspicion and the natural result is reticence. If I had asked those people for information they would have shut up like oyster. But my making a statement and by your contradiction of it, tongues are immediately loosened”(page 34) This is the ongoing stereotype in the novel, that English people are not always willing to cooperate. In order to gain information one must use trickery.
The Remains of The Day focuses of English traditions and status. Because the novel is told through the eyes of a butler it’s social experiences are very limiting, but like The A.B.C. Murders, it also has its stereotypes. One of which is that English people try to hold themselves up by a certain standard whether or not they have to falsify themselves to do...