The Stuff I Read: Agatha Christie: Times Change: Politics: ARGH!

My draft on Christie's Politics sucks. It's all over the place and I hate it and I'm tired.

Ah, the hell with it. I'll stick it up, and over the next week I'll tweak it until it has a semblance of cohesion.

Agatha Christie wrote in her present. Considering her career spanned more than 50 years, that's no mean feat.

People will always suffer jealousy and greed. People wronged will desire revenge until the end of time. If a crime writer writes merely about the passionate crimes, changing with the times isn't that difficult. Just alter the language and throw in some new technology.

Christie, however, wrote some crimes that were very political.

Now, Christiephiles everywhere know about her espionage stories. Tommy and Tuppence Beresford did a whole heap of those (N or M? being a particularly good one). This is about the murder mysteries Christie's detective solved that churned up motives (for murder or otherwise) of a much grander scale.

It's interesting that when the first Poirot book came out, The Great War was just ending. The Ottoman Empire was destroyed. When was the last time before then that an Empire had gone down? Has there been one since? A war like no one alive had seen before. For first time, people were recognizing the damaging effect immense violence can have on individuals and countries.

She reflected it. In Captain Hastings, invalided out of the service, in tragic characters such as Alexander Bonaparte Cust, who suffered from severe PTSD. In Poirot himself, who began life in England as a refugee, aided by an elderly Englishwoman's generosity towards the small, brave country of Belgium.

Not long before World War Two kicked off, Christie's characters were discussing the rise of fascism and the fear of socialism. In The Labours of Hercules, and American mentions a new political party taking Germany by storm and mentions casually that those people "are just crazy". "Just crazy" dropped bombs on England not long after.

In “One Two Buckle My Shoe” the murderer’s motive is the protection of England, of the World. He sees the threat of the two extremes (personified in the two young Arrogant Jerks) and kills for survival. For his own survival, and for the survival of the Financially Conservative political standard he knows and understands.

“Hickory Dickory Dock” takes place in 1955. It’s about a bunch of grad students living in a hostel. Subversive stuff happens. It’s drug dealing and murder, but since one of the young women is American, people worry she’s going to go McCarthy on them.

When the sixties rolled around, the Cold War was going on. Poirot shakes his head at the thought of nuclear war in “The Clocks”. He does not want to discuss the bomb. Christie’s detective was very old, and very tired.

Kind of like the chick writing this post.