57 pages • 1 hour read
Agatha ChristieA Pocket Full of Rye
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1953A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Homes and Their Owners
Multiple characters, at various points in the plot, take in Yewtree Lodge and draw conclusions about it. Inspector Neele dislikes it instantly, noting that it bears no resemblance to the small porter’s lodge in which he grew up. Instead, it reflects the nouveau riche pretensions of the Fortescues, as “just the kind of mansion that rich people built themselves and then called ‘our little place in the country’” (28). Neele notes that an old yew tree is practically the only surviving reminder of the area’s past: “[S]ince it was a valuable antique the tree had been kept and incorporated in the new setup” (29). Those like the Fortescues have no interest in nature as a source of peace or aesthetic satisfaction, only as a display of wealth. The tree’s role as the likely source of the poison underscores the idea that there is something unhealthy in the landscape. It reinforces the theme of Class, Ambition, and Transgression.
Pat Fortescue, tellingly, reaches similar conclusions to Neele. She criticizes the overly manicured gardens and selection of plants and intensely dislikes the yew trees. Lance tries to tell her that this is only due to their association with the murder, but she tells Miss Marple later, “I don’t believe this was ever a happy house” (193). Her alienation from it thus demonstrates that while she may care for Lance, she does not truly know him. Her nature is fundamentally decent, which is why she recoils so sharply from an atmosphere steeped in ambition and greed. Miss Marple, too, is a visitor to the house, who hurries away as soon as her task is accomplished, back to her more wholesome home.
Childhood, Youth, and Old Age
References to the passage of time, especially old age relative to youth, frequently reinforce the theme of Gender, Intuition, and Justice. Lance Fortescue repeats to Pat that “one’s got to settle down sometime” (47), as if marriage has put an end to a kind of protracted adolescence. Miss Ramsbottom frequently refers to him as a boy, as if to associate some of his malfeasance with youthful impetuosity. Gladys Martin is a naive and credulous victim in part because of her youth, while Miss Marple’s cynicism about human nature comes from long experience. She is frequently described as “pink and white” (105), a decidedly feminine-coded color scheme, though it is accompanied by reminders of her age, as if to underscore how unassuming and nonthreatening she appears.
Though Rex is often described as an elderly man, some of his behavior is typically ascribed to youth, namely his impetuous marriage and equally impulsive financial decisions, as if to underscore that even before his dementia, he had earned none of the advantages of old age. Miss Marple references Neele’s youth, gently encouraging him to recall the text of “Sing a Song of Sixpence.” Neele’s dismissal of its salience underlines his repeated underestimation of Miss Marple. Miss Marple reveals that the rhyme was merely camouflage for greed, as if to suggest that it is the challenges of adulthood that motivate murder, not childhood classics.
Newspapers and Letters
For Christie, written sources and personal correspondence are key to driving the mystery plot forward. Correspondence also reinforces the theme of ambition and criminality. The newspapers summon Miss Marple to Yewtree Lodge. When she first appears in the text, she “had bought three morning papers” all describing the most recent murders (105). She relies on Neele to confirm the truth of what she has read, as part of her argument for the importance of the nursery rhyme.
On his first search of Gladys’s room, Neele finds a variety of newspaper articles that interested her, including “truth drugs used by Russians” (102). Neele attaches no significance to this or to the postcards he finds from Albert Evans alluding to future meetings. Later, Miss Marple uses it to explain her theory of Rex’s death: Gladys’s admirer told her that the truth drugs were real and that that was what she was administering, not a fatal poison. Miss Marple thus makes order out of what Neele assumes to be randomness, reinforcing the theme of gender and social influence. Neele himself has an intuitive flash courtesy of a newspaper when he realizes that the Blackbird Mine is in a part of Kenya recently famous for uranium deposits, not in West Africa as Lance had claimed. Written text, in each case, brings intuition into sharper detail and leads to evidence. This motif culminates at the end of the novel, when Miss Marple returns home to find a letter from Gladys confirming that Albert was really Lance. This personal correspondence attests to a genuine bond, rather than the false romance of Albert’s postcards or the sensationalized newspaper articles about truth serum.
Related Titles
By Agatha Christie
