The Justification Or Mr. Owen

The Justification Or Mr. Owen

In the novel And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie, Judge Lawrence Wargrave, a man who has spent his life concerned with crime, decides to anonymously lure ten people to their death. Although each is involved in a crime, Wargrave has no right to be the person who decides if they die. The ten people he murders deserve a fair trial. His actions towards these people were wrong and unethical.
Justice Wargrave murders people who were guilty, but didn’t deserve the punishment of being executed. Vera Claythorne, a secretary, was caught up in her desires to marry a man named Hugo. Hugo’s nephew was the only one in her way. Because Vera thought that Hugo’s nephew was obtrusive, she eliminated him: “A picture rose clearly before her mind. Cyril’s head, bobbing up and down, swimming to the rock…and herself swimming in easy practiced strokes after him- cleaving her way through the water but knowing only too surely that she wouldn’t be in time” (11). Nothing had come up in the inquest, but Hugo realized what she had done and refused to marry her. Vera died when she hung herself, completing the rhyme’s tenth and final verse. Dr. Armstrong was another victim. He operated on an ill woman while under the influence of alcohol. This led to the death of the woman. What he did was sloppy and totally unprofessional, but the Judge’s execution was uncalled for. General MacArthur was the third victim. He had loved a woman named Leslie, but she was in love with someone else. Since Leslie’s lover, Arthur Richmond, was apart of the war like the General had been, MacArthur saw Richmond’s death as a feasible solution to his problem: “He’d sent Richmond to his death. Only a miracle could have brought him through unhurt. That miracle didn’t happen” (56). What MacArthur did was wrong, but what Wargrave did was worse.
Lawrence Wargrave killed people who, although involved with the deaths of other innocents, didn’t deserve the death that was handed to...