The Moving Finger

Christie inserts countless “red herrings” into her work, making multiple characters likely suspects for the crime. What red herrings appear in The Moving Finger? How do these red herrings contribute to the novel’s wider exploration of appearances versus reality?

Analyze the novel’s depiction of gender dynamics. How do the villagers conceive of gender roles or stereotypes? How does the narrative reinforce, or challenge, these dynamics and assumptions?

Assess Jerry’s narration of the story. How does his self-presentation and narrative style affect the narrative and the depiction of the other characters?

Choose one of the novel’s secondary or minor characters, like Partridge, Inspector Graves, or Miss Marple. How are they characterized? What is their role and wider significance in the novel?

The novel offers a subtle but important thread on class hierarchies, both in terms of how upper-class characters like Jerry and Mr. Pye respond to the lower-class characters in the village, and in the power dynamics between employers and employees in the village households. How does the novel depict these class dynamics? How do they add to the novel’s interest in social tensions throughout the narrative?

Megan is an especially important character in the story, both as Jerry’s love interest and as someone who is deeply entwined with many of the town’s tensions. How does Megan change over the course of the narrative?

The Moving Finger raises many questions about the nature of community. What does the novel suggest about what makes a community strong or weak? In what ways, if any, does the characters’ understanding of community develop throughout the narrative?

There are many forms of deception in the novel, up to and including Mr. Symmington’s crime. How does the novel explore different types of deception and its impacts?