Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary
devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
The “Ten Little Indians” Poem
The “Ten Little Indians” rhyme guides the progression
of the novel. The singsong, childish verses tell the story of the
deaths of ten Indian boys and end with the line that gives the novel
its title: “and then there were none.” A framed copy of the rhyme
hangs in every bedroom, and ten small Indian figures sit on the
dining-room table. The murders are carried out to match, as closely
as possible, the lines in the poem, and after each murder, one of
the figures vanishes from the dining room. The overall effect is
one of almost supernatural inevitability; eventually, all the characters
realize that the next murder will match the next verse, yet they
are unable to escape their fates. The poem affects Vera Claythorne
more powerfully than it affects anyone else. She becomes obsessed
with it, and when she eventually kills herself she is operating
under the suggestive power of the poem’s final verse.
Dreams and Hallucinations
Dreams and hallucinations recur throughout the novel,
usually as a reflection of various characters’ guilty consciences.
Dr. Armstrong has a dream in which he operates on a person whose
face is first Emily Brent’s and then Tony Marston’s. This dream
likely grows out of Armstrong’s memories of accidentally killing
a woman on the operating table. Emily Brent seems to go into a trance
while writing in her diary; she wakes from it to find the words
“The murderer’s name is Beatrice Taylor” scrawled across the page.
Beatrice Taylor is the name of Emily Brent’s former maid, who got
pregnant and killed herself after Emily Brent fired her. Brent’s
unconscious scrawl demonstrates, if not her guilty conscience, at
least her preoccupation with the death of her servant. Vera Claythorne
often feels that Hugo Hamilton—her former lover, for whose sake
she let a little boy drown—watches her, and whenever she smells
the sea, she remembers the day the boy died, as if hallucinating.
