Rethinking Agatha Christie

I selected the chapter of Rethinking Popular Culture and Media entitled “Rethinking Agatha Christie: The strange and offensive history of Ten Little Indians” (by Sudie Hofmann) because I read And Then There Were None for a required summer book report, maybe going into sophomore year of high school. I was happy with the assignment because I had previously enjoyed watching the 1945 film with my mother. I remember many intriguing details of the mystery and moments in key scenes, even though 30 or so years have passed. The reverence for Christie’s “masterpiece” is why it is so often revisited. Through this reading we learn that the many attempts made to address the works racist roots fall short, begging the question: Can works so embedded with racism be salvaged, and even used as opportunities to address racism? 

Hofmann began researching the history of the 1943 theatrical version of Christie’s play And Then There Were None because she was involved in an activist group opposing the use of American Indian mascots and team nicknames, and her local high school was advertising a production of it.

Hofmann learned that songwriter Septimus Winner in 1849 wrote a rhyme called “Old John Brown” containing the refrain “one little, two little, three little Indians.” An 1866 revision entitled “Ten Little Indians” included overtly racist stereotypes within gory descriptions of each Indian’s demise. A tune was set to it a few years later and was so popular with children it was considered a nursery rhyme.

Through time, geography, and metamorphosis, Indians were replaced with N-words, and Christie’s 1939 novel inspired by the nursery rhyme (Ten Little N[-word]s) was published in the UK under that title, though its 1940 US title was changed to And Then There Were None. I remembered my mom telling me about the name change in acknowledgement of racism toward indigenous Americans (her grandmother was ¾ Mi’kmaq), but had no idea, until reading Hofmann’s piece, the anti-Black history and Christie’s original use of the N-word in the title. I hadn’t even considered how the new title “presents another aspect of embedded racism, which is that of genocide.” (p. 164)

Hofmann suggests that in order to help schools considering a production to understand why so many changes have occurred over time, students can 1) consider “issues of race, xenophobia, privilege, and power,” 2) “study definitions of genocide and… possible racial tensions in the school,” 3) acknowledge that many classic works contain racist views, and 4) “consider whether issues of suicide, depression, guns, and murder are appropriate for school-sponsored events” to confront violence head on.