Hmmm... what to say about this. Presently...I am reading this book Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie and I'm also playing the game though I have gotten further into the book than the game... I have to much homework. It's about at least 16 or 17 strangers all on a train from different ethnic backgrounds.
I love the mystery part of the book, which is a big chunk of the whole thing, but what I don't like is the blatant racial remarks about each others race. First, I see the stereotypical cold British man, Edward Masterman, who doesn't think much of Americans, the stereotypical loudmouthed middle-aged American woman who's all about her daughter--I laughed at the times when the detective, Hercule Poirot, mentions her daughter as a plain looking child, and her children as ugly children--there's the Italian who is thought to have commited the crime of murdering an American man first because he is Italian and the American man's real name is Casetti... "they may have been part of the same gang" says another character, Monsieur Bouc. Then, this same character, says that since the American man was stabbed with a knife 15 times that it must have been the Italian, Antonio Foscarelli, because a Latin crime as he called it is--according to him--driven by such strong emotion that the only Latin man on the train would be the one capable of stabbing a man 15 times with a knife... and he also said that the knife was the preferred weapon of Italians... right.
Of course there was the secretary to the deceased man, Hector MacQueen, that knew more than one language or more than "good old American" as he called it. He was actually one character I liked aside from the fact that he said that "Britishers" were a stiff necked race and he usually didn't care for them. The same thing was said about Americans by Hector's newfound "friend" the British Colonel Arbuthnot . However, the Swedish woman, Greta Olhsson, struck me as neutral--I wonder if that was supposed to mean something--although she was the last one to see the murdered man alive. There are some more characters but nothing really stood out for me as it did for the other characters.
I don't know... maybe I'm looking too much into this or something but that's what I observed while reading the book. I know it takes place in the 30s and the societal norms or whatever that are in existence that were certainly different then. Maybe, I should just think of the book in a deeper way. You have all of these ethnicities--for the most part eight--under the same roof for about three days. Yes, they all have their differences in the beginning but at the end they all have something in common--except for the murdered man among them--they're all suspects to a crime. Think of it as unity or whatever you want.
One little thing I'd to add. The author, Agatha Christie, had written a book now titled And Then There Were None which was called Ten Little Indians before that, like the poem and before that it was called Ten Little Niggers. Now pardon me for that, but I had to write the title. I don't necessarily know what to make of that, I mean, in todays society it is seen as racist. Mind you, Agatha Christie was born in the late 1800s and died in 1970, by the time she wrote that book, the 'N' word... I sound juvenile... was probably not regarded as such an awful word as it was now. Especially not in England as it was in America. Does that mean I should read the book--or play the game for that matter? I don't know... I think I will read the book and play the game just because of my love of mystery. (Seriously I have almost all of the Nancy Drew games)
Sorry for the essay-like feel of this post... I just finished writing a paper and it takes me a few minutes to switch back to normal speak...
