Major Themes
Like Appointment with Death (1938) before it, this is a novel in which the victim is depicted as a sadistic tyrant whose characteristics are mirrored or distorted in the next generation. This theme arises in Christie’s work at the end of the 1930s, enabling her characters to explore the psychology of inheritance in later works such as Crooked House (1949) and Ordeal by Innocence (1958).
In some editions, the novel is headed by an epigraph from Macbeth that appears repeatedly in the novel itself: "Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?"
Read more about this topic: Hercule Poirot's Christmas
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