Srednja škola ‘’Vuk Karadžić’’ sa domom učenika

Babušnica

Maturski rad iz engleskog jezika

Tema:
Agata Kristi – Svet misterije
i zločina

Mentor: Kandidat:
prof. Marija Ristić Mihajlo Živković

Jun, 2021
Babušnica, Srbija
 Vuk Karadžić High school with a dormitory
Babušnica

The Final English Paper

Theme:
Agatha Christie – The world
of mystery and crime

Mentor: Candidate:
Prof. Marija Ristić Mihajlo Živković

June, 2021
Babušnica, Serbia
 Contents

About Christie............................................................................................................................1
How Christie wrote....................................................................................................................2
Works of fiction.........................................................................................................................3
Hercule Poirot........................................................................................................................3
Appearance.............................................................................................................................4
Methods..................................................................................................................................5
Origins....................................................................................................................................5
Miss Marple...........................................................................................................................6
Tommy and Tuppence............................................................................................................8
The Beginning........................................................................................................................8
The Curious Disappearance.......................................................................................................9
Formula and plot devices.........................................................................................................11
The Later Years........................................................................................................................13
Introduction

When people hear the name Agatha Christie, most of them first think of detective Hercule
Poirot. However, few people know that Agatha is much more than just a crime novelist. As
the author of numerous works, the ''queen of crime'', as she is quite rightly called, has pushed
the limit when it comes to writing. Hercule Poirot, perhaps the most famous detective ever, is
the most significant creation of her genius mind, and her stories leave breathless billions of
fans of detective novels that have been translated into more than 50 languages around the
world. Therefore, it is no wonder that she is one of the best-selling authors of all time and
certainly the best writer of detective stories ever.
About Christie

Born in Torquay in 1890, Agatha Christie became, and remains, the best – selling novelist
of all time. She is best known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections,
particularly those revolving around fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. She
also wrote the world’s longest – running play, The Moustrap. Her books have sold over a
billion copies in the English language and a billion in translation.
She was born into a comfortably well of middle class family. What made her upbringing
unusual, even for its time, was that she was home schooled largely by her father, an
American. Her mother, Clara, who was an excellent storyteller, did not want her to learn to
read until she was eight but Agatha, bored and as the only child at home taught herself to read
by the age of five.
She was initially an unsuccessful writer with six consecutive rejections, but this changed
in 1920 when The Mysterious Affair at Styles featuring detective Hercule Poirot, was
published. During both World Wars, she served in hospital dispensaries, acquiring a thorough
knowledge of the poisons which featured in many of her novels, short stories and plays. Her
novel And Then There Were None is one of the top – selling books of all time, with
approximately 100 million copies sold.

Christie as a girl

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How Christie wrote

Spending most of her time with imaginary friends, Agatha Clarissa Miller's
unconventional childhood fostered an extraordinary imagination. Against her mother's
wishes, she taught herself to read and had little or no formal education until the age of fifteen
or sixteen when she was sent to a finishing school in Paris.
Agatha Christie always said that she had no ambition to be a writer although she made her
debut in print at the age of eleven with a poem printed in a local London newspaper. Finding
herself in bed with influenza, her mother suggested she write down the stories she was so
fond of telling. And so a lifelong passion began. By her late teens she had had several poems
published in The Poetry Review and had written a number of short stories. But it was her
sister's challenge to write a detective story that would later spark what would become her
illustrious career.
Agatha Christie wrote about the world she knew and saw, drawing on the military
gentlemen, lords and ladies, spinsters, widows and doctors of her family's circle of friends
and acquaintences. She was a natural observer and her descriptions of village politics, local
rivalries and family jealousies are often painfully accurate. Mathew Prichard describes her as
a ''person who listened more than she talked, who saw more than she was seen''.
The most everyday events and casual observations could trigger the idea for a new plot.
Her second book The Secret Adversary stemmed from a conversation overheard in a tea
shop: “Two people were talking at a table nearby, discussing somebody called Jane Fish…
That, I thought, would make a good beginning to a story - a name overheard at a tea shop -
an unusual name, so that whoever heard it remembered it. A name like Jane Fish, or perhaps
Jane Finn would be even better.”
And how were these ideas turned into novels? She made endless notes in dozens of
notebooks, jotting down erratic ideas and potential plots and characters as they came to her “I
usually have about half a dozen (notebooks) on hand and I used to make notes in them of
ideas that struck me, or about some poison or drug, or a clever little bit of swindling that I
had read about in the paper”.
Of the more than one hundred notebooks that must have existed, 73 have survived and
John Curran’s detailed and thorough analysis provides a veritable treasure trove of
revelations about her stories and how they evolved. She spent the majority of time with each
book working out all the plot details and clues in her head or her notebooks before she
actually started writing. Her son-in-law Anthony Hicks once said: ’’You never saw her
writing’’, she never ’’shut herself away, like other writers do’’.
As grandson Mathew Prichard explains, ’’she then used to dictate her stories into a
machine called a Dictaphone and then a secretary typed this up into a typescript, which my
grandmother would correct by hand. I think that, before the war, before Dictaphones were
invented, she probably used to write the stories out in longhand and then somebody used to
type them. She wasn’t very mechanical, she wrote in a very natural way and she wrote very

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quickly. I think a book used to take her, in the 1950s, just a couple of months to write and
then a month to revise before it was sent off to the publishers. Once the whole process of
writing the book had finished then sometimes she used to read the stories to us after dinner,
one chapter or two chapters at a time. I think we were used as her guinea pigs at that stage; to
find out what the reaction of the general public would be. Of course, apart from my family,
there were usually some other guests here and reactions were very different. Only my mother
always knew who the murderer was, the rest of us were sometimes successful and sometimes
not.

’’Plots come to me at such odd moments, when I am walking along the street, or
examining a hat shop...suddenly a splendid idea comes into my head.’’

Works of fiction

Hercule Poirot

It was during the First World War that Agatha turned to detective stories. Her debut novel
The Mysterious Affair at Styles took some time to finish and even longer to find a publisher.
She started writing partly in response to a bet from her sister Madge that she couldn’t write a
good detective story and partly ro relieve the monotony of the dispensing work which she
was now doing. She first worked out her plot and then ’’found’’ her characters on a tram in
Torquay. She finished the manuscript during her two week holiday which she spent at the

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Moorland Hotel at Haytor on Dartmoor. Her new found
expertise in poisons was also put to good use. The
murderer’s use of poison was so well described that
when the book was eventually published Agatha
received an unprecedented honour for a writer of fiction
– a review in the Phramaceutical Journal.
1919 was a momentous year for Agatha. With the
end of the war, Archie had found a job in the City and
they had just enough money to rent and furnish a flat in
London. Later that year, on the 5th August, Agatha
gave birth to their only daughter, Rosalind. It was also
the year that a publisher, John Lane of The Bodley
Head, and the fourth to have received manuscript,
accepted The Mysterious Affair at Styles for publication
and contracted Agatha to produce five more books.
John Lane insisted on a couple of changes to her
manuscript including a reworked final chapter – instead
of a courtroom climax, Lane proposed the now familiar
denouement in the library.
So where did the inspiration for Hercule Poirot
come from? During the First World War there were
Belgian refugees in most parts of the English
countryside, Torquay being no exception. Although he was not based on any particular
person, Agatha thought that a Belgian refugee, a former great Belgian policeman, would
make an excellent detective for The Mysterious Affair at Styles. Hercule Poirot was born. He
appeared in 33 of her novels and more than 50 short stories.
Over the years, Christie grew tired of Poirot. By the end of the 1930s, Christie wrote in
her diary that she was finding Poirot ’’insufferable’’, and by the 1960s she felt he was ’’an
egocentric creep’’. Thompson believes Christie’s occasional antipathy to her creation is
overstated, and points out that ’’in later life she sought to protect him against
misrepresentation as powerfully as if he were her own flesh and blood’’. Unlike Conan
Doyle, she resisted the temptation to kill her detective off while he was still popular. Poirot
was the only fictional character to receive an obituary on the front page of The New York
Times.

Appearance

Captain Arthut Hastings is a fictional character created by Agatha Christie as the companion-
chronicler and best friend of the Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot. His first description of
Poirot: ’’He was hardly more than five feet four inches but carried himself with great dignity.
His head was exactly the shape of an egg, and he always perched it a little on one side. His
moustache was very stiff and military. Even if everything on his face was covered, the tips of
moustache and the pink-tipped nose would be visible. The neatness of his attire was almost

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incredible; I believe a speck of dust would have caused him more pain than a bullet wound.
Yet this quaint dandified little man who, I was worry to see, now limped badly, had been in
his time one of the most celebrated members of the Belgian police’’.
Frequent mention is made of his patent leather shoes, damage to which is frequently a source
of misery for him, but comical for the reader. Poirot is extremely punctual and carries a
pocket watch almost to the end of his career.

Methods

In The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Poirot operates as a fairly conventional, clue-based and
logical detective; reflected in his vocabulary by two common phrases: his use of ’’the little
grey cells’’ and ’’order or method’’. Hasting is irritated by the fact that Poirot sometimes
conceals important details of his plans, as in The Big Four. In this novel, Hastings is kept in
the dark throughout the climax. This aspect of Poirot is less evident in the later novels, partly
because there is rarely a narrator to mislead.
In Mured on the Links, still largely dependent on clues himself, Poirot mocks a rival
’’bloodhound’’ detective who focuses on the traditional trail of clues established in detective
fiction. From this point on, Poirot establishes his psychological bona fides. Rather than a
painstakingly examining crime scenes, he enquires into the nature of the victim or the
psychology of the murderer. He predicates his actions in the later novels on his underlying
assumption that particular crimes are committed by particular types of people.
Poirot focuses on getting people to talk. In the early novels, he casts himself in the role of
’’Papa Poirot’’, a benign confessor, especially to young women. In later works, Christie made
a point of having Poirot supply false or misleading information about himself or his
background to assist him in obtaining information. In The Mured of Roger Ackroyd, Poirot
speaks of a non-existent mentally disabled nephew to uncover information about homes for
the mentally unfit.
He also has a tendency to refer to himself in the third person. In later novels, Christie
often uses the word mountebank when characters describe Poirot, showing that he has
successfully passed himself off as charlatan or fraud.

Origins

Christie was purposely vague about Poirot’s origins, as he is thought to be an elderly man
even in the early novels. In An Autobiography, she admitted that she already imagined him to
be an old man in 1920. At that time, however, she had no idea she would write works
featuring him for decades to come. Christie wrote that Poirot is a Catholic by birth, but not
much is described about his later religious convictions, except sporadic references to his
’’going to church’’. Christie provides little information regarding Poirot’s childhood, only
mentioning that he comes from a large family with little wealth. Apart from French and

5
English, Poirot is also
fluent in German.

Statue of Poirot in Ellezelles, Belgium

Miss Marple

Miss Jane Marple was introduced in a series of short stories that began publication in
December 1927 and were subsequently collected under the title The Thirteen Problems.
Marple was a genteel, elderly spinster who solved crimes using analogies to English village
life. Christie said: ’’Miss Marple was not in any way a picture of my grandmother; she was
far more fussy and spinterish than my grandmother ever was’’. But one thing she did have in
common with her – though a cheerful person, she always expected the worst of everyone and
everything, and was, with almost frightening accuracy, usually proved right.

6
 For a woman who has spent her life in the small village of St Mary Mead, Miss Marple is
surprisingly worldly. She has every opportunity to observe human nature – as she often
points out, ’’There is a great deal od wickedness in village life.’’
What makes Miss Marple so effective as a detective is her ability to blend into the
background and for her schrewd intelligence to be hidden behind her love of knitting,
gardening and gossip; unassuming and often overlooked, she has the freedom to pursue the
truth. Criminals and murderers fail to realise that with every stich she is not only making a
cardigan, but solving a crime.

Miss Marple illustration

’’Miss Marple was an atractive old lady, tall and thin, with pink cheeks and blue eyes, and
a gentle, rather fussy manner.’’
-Sleeping Murder

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Tommy and Tuppence

Tommy and Tuppence are two fictional detectives. International spies, two world wars,
murders, thefts and not to mention marriage. Tommy and Tuppence seek out excitement
wherever it may lie. Tuppence leads the way with her charismatic nature, while Tommy’s
slow, considered manner provides the perfect foil.
Young adventures Limited – willing to do anything, go anywhere – no unreasonable offer
refused.’’

-The Secret Adversary

The Beginning

The first Tommy and Tuppence adventure was published in 1922. Young Tuppence
Cowley bumps into olf friend Tommy Beresford at Dover Street tube station. It’s just after
World War I and jobs are very thin on the ground so Tuppence comes up with a plan to form

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’Young Adventures Ltd’ – ’’Willing to do anything. Go anywhere...No unreasonable offer
refused.’’
Their stories were the ones Agatha Christie enjoyed writing the most; she took real
pleasure from her bright young things, and they are the only detectives in Agatha Christie’s
arsenal to age with each story, keeping approximate pace with Christie herself. Their
adventures take them through four novels and a short story collection, marrying at the end of
the first book, The Secret Adversary, and going on to have three children: twins Derek and
Deborah, and an adopted daughter called Betty.

’’Very few of us are what we seem’’

The Curious Disappearance

In August 1926, Archie asked Agatha for a divorce. On 3 December 1926, the pair
quarrelled after Archie announced his plan to spend the weekend with friends,
unaccompanied by his wife. Late that evening, Christie disappeared from their home. The
following morning, her car was discovered at Newlands Corner, parked above a chalk quarry
with an expired driving licence and clothes inside.
The disappearance quickly became a news story, as the press sought to satisfy their
readers’ ’’hunger for sensation, disaster and scandal’’. Home secretary William Joynson-
Hicks pressured police and a newspaper offered a reward. More than a thousand police
officers, 15,000 volunteers, and several aeroplanes searched the rural landscape. Christie’s
disappearance was featured on the front page of The New York Times. Despite the extensive
manhunt, she was not found for another 10 days. On 14 December 1926, she was located at
the Swan Hydropathic Hotel in Harrogate, Yorkshire.
Christie’s autobiography makes no reference to the disappearance. Two doctors
diagnosed her as suffering from ’’an unquestionable genuine loss of memory’’, yet opinion
remains divided over the reason for her disappearance.

9
10
Formula and plot devices

Christie has been called the ’’Duchess of Death’’, the ’’Mistress of Mystery’’, and the
’’Queen of Crime’’. Early in her career, a reporter noted that ’’her plots are possible, logical,
and always new. Agatha regularly looked for ’’creative inspiration’’ by studying the people
around her; however, her chosen genre, the murder mystery, stunted her writing process
because it was difficult at times to put reality into fictional environments; for examplee, she
sometimes had trouble using attributes of acquaintences to do things she couldn’t imagine
them doing, like murder, and this often caused writer’s block. To overcome this obstacle, she
would develop many characters from scratch. She would note physical appearances of
strangers whom she saw and met in public and then would use their likeness and subtle
mannerisms to develop relatable characters for her mysteries.
Agatha was adept at combining period subject matter with delicate story development,
creative plot structure, and psychology. This is evident in her novel Curtain, her brilliant
finale. Written long before her death and placed in a bank safe with instructions to be
published only after her demise, Curtain is a masterpiece that utilizes the best of her talents.
A common thread in many of Agatha’s novels was to develop a psychological struggle
and to use topical references and brilliant characters who appeared to be crossing a stage. Her
stories felt that way, as if you were sitting in an audience watching the most elegant play
unfold before you. It’s not surprising that films and TV shows based directly on her works
were filled with great actors playing crusty and snooty, yet relatable, desparate characters.
To avoid stagnation, Agatha developed a habit of writing more than one book at a time.
Despite being raised by an affluent upper-class family in
England, her language was always simple, using a
writing style that every reader could understand and
enjoy. Although simple in style, her intriguing plots and
sub-plots challenged readers to figure out ’’who done it’’
before the story ended. Agatha cleverly paced material,
allowing readers to move through stories at a steady or
slow pace that enhanced the drama. She relied heavily on
dialogue, a technique to vary the pacing of the story as
well as to heighten suspense. The beginnings of her
works are strong on description, which gradually drop
off as dialogue and interaction between characters take
over. With shorter sentences and sharp dialogue, she
hurries readers along to what’s always a captivating
conclusion.

Agatha preferred to plot her crime stories from the

murder itself. First, she would plan out the mode of murder, the killer, and the purpose.

11
Second, she would factor in the various suspects and their own intents. Third, she would
concoct potential clues and diversionary tactics to pull readers in different directions. She
restrained herself from including excessive misleading clues because it would stifle the plot.
Agatha devised her mysteries with intricate deceptions to manipulate readers’ thoughts
and feelings and to make it more difficult for readers to solve the main mystery. She often
used the same story-development formula for many of her crime novels: the main character—
a detective or private investigator - either discovers the murder or a past friend, somehow
associated with the murder, contacts the main character for help. As the story unfolds, the
main character questions every suspect, investigates the location of the crime, and carefully
jots down each clue, allowing readers to scrutinize the clue and try to solve the mystery on
their own. Just as readers build up clues and think they know who might have comitted the
murder, Agatha kills off one or a few main suspects, leaving readers shocked and confused
that they were wrong about the murderer’s identity. Eventually the main character gathers all
of the remaining suspects at one location and reprimands the culprit, revealing numerous
unconnected secrets along the way, usually lasting 20-30 pages.
An Autobiography contains her memoirs and her reflections on life, including her writing
career. It is believed she began writing her autobiography in 1950 and eventually completed
it in 1965.

It’s not a coincidence

that Agatha’s most famous protagonist, Hercule Poirot, constantly referred to his approach to

12
solving mysteries as using his “little gray cells,” a reference to his brain. Similarly, Agatha
applied her “little gray cells” to the written page. She was an exceptionally smart and gifted
writer, deftly combining sharp structure with a psychological spin that still feels fresh today.
She refused to write down to her readers, but instead invited all types of readers into her
stories. She left a library of work that’s both intelligent and timeless. A reader can pick up a
book published decades ago and not feel any passage of time. Murder and good writing - a
combination that made the “Queen of Crime” one of the best writers in history.

The Later Years

By 1945 and the return of Max with the end of the war, Agatha had realised the tax
implications of writing so much. She became less prolific and now in her mid 50s enjoyed a
slower pace of life; like the rest of the country the last years of the 40s were full of shortages
– a long, chilly, depressing haul.
At the end of 1946, Agatha’s cover as Mary Westmacott was blown by an American
reviewer of Absent in the Spring. She was disappointed as she had enjoyed the freedom to
write without the pressure of being Agatha Christie.
The 1940s and 50s saw much time-consuming work with theatrical productions which
also limited the time Agatha could devote to writing.
Agatha’s last public appearnce was at the opening night of the 1974 film version Murder
on the Orient Express starring Alber Finney as Hercule Poirot. Her verdict: a good adaptation
with the minor point that Poirot’s moustaches weren’t luxurious enough.
After a hugely successful career and a very happy life Agatha died peacefully on 12
January 1976. She is buried in the churchyard of St Mary’s, Cholsey, near Wallingford.

Winterbrook House, her final

home. Christie lived here with
her husband from 1934 until her
death in 1976.

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Saint
Mary’s

Church, Cholsey

Christie’s gravestone at St Mary’s

Church, Cholsey, Oxfordshire

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Conclusion

Agatha Christie is a writer who has left an indelible mark in the history of literature. She was
nicknamed ''The Queen of Crime'' for a reason because her works are unique and no one has
written like her so far. Her works and novels are still being studied and are the subject of a lot
of researches. She will live on forever through her novels.
Bibliography

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agatha_Christie
https://www.agathachristie.com/
https://www.sparknotes.com/
https://www.freelancewriting.com/
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