Character+Sketch+VL

Character Sketch VL

In And Then There Were None, there is a mysterious character named Mr. or Mrs. Owen. The other characters don't know anything else about Mr. Owen, so they call him/her Unknown. I believe, because of certain textual evidence, that Mr. Owen is actually Justice Wargrave. He is on the island, somehow or other knows all the other people indirectly, and is trying to kill all of the others to punish them for past transgressions.

I believe that Mr. Owens has to be someone on the island because of information on p. 96. On this page, it was proven that the mystery character is on the island because the ten little Indian figurines are disappearing one by one as other characters die. Since Mr. Owen has to be on the island, I think that he must be Justice Wargrave. I suspect Wargrave because he tries to keep the suspicion off of him by conducting the investigation. "I think that the time has come for us all to pool our information. It would be well, I think, for everybody to come forward with all the information they have regarding the owner of the house." This quote was from Justice Wargrave on page 52. He is taking charge so people don't suspect him.

I think that Justice Wargrave knows everyone on the island, but not directly. Pages 52-53 detail his letters to the other characters. They may have been friends of friends, or people that the state tried to convict but didn't have enough evidence. He knew enough information about them to convince them to go to the island. This leads into why I think that the ultimate goal of Wargrave is to kill all of the people on the island to punish them for their past transgressions. On page 42, a voice accuses everyone of murdering someone. "You are charged with the following indictments... Prisoners at the bar, have you anything to say in your defense?" I think that this was a message from Wargrave. He knew that their cases could never be proven in court, so he wanted to take matters into his own hands. Because he is a judge, he would naturally want to take bring justice, regardless of the methods.

All of these reasons point to Wargrave being Mr. Owen, however, we honestly won't know until the end of the book. I love the suspense in this story, and I can't wait to see if my prediction is correct.