论文总字数：30966字

摘 要

英国“侦探小说女王”的阿加莎·克里斯蒂一生创作了近100部侦探推理小说，毫无疑问，《无人生还》是最杰出的作品之一。阿加莎·克里斯蒂她自己也很喜欢这部作品。她在自传中提到，这本书“有着清晰的暗示又迷惑读者，但可以用理性来解释”，而且她自己比评论家更清楚：“写这本小说有多困难！”作者在叙事过程中有意将第三方上帝视角和人物内视角交织在一起，并有大量的第一人称内心独白来描述心理。这些心理描写促进了情节的发展。这样，小说不仅可以照顾到整部小说中的每一个主角，而且可以通过个人心理描写慢慢揭露谋杀案的线索。

本文列举了《无人生还》中的典型心理描写片段。通过日记、记忆、幻象等载体，阿加莎·克里斯蒂深化了小说主人公的性格，在作品内容丰富的同时，逐步向读者揭示了主人公们的结局。本文通过对阿加莎笔下人物心理的分析，探讨了人物的心理活动与其口头话语之间的矛盾、人物心理活动对其行为的实际支配、心理描写对小说结构的作用等。通过分析人物心理不仅可以让读者对《无人生还》中的人物形象有了新的理解和认识，而且对读者今后在自身的写作中学习如何应用心理描写手法有很大帮助。

关键词：内心独白；个体心理；口头话语

Introduction

1.1 Research background

1.1.1 About Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie (1890~1976), a British female novelist who is recognized as the "Queen of Detective Novels" in the world literary world, has created nearly one hundred detective mysteries in her life. She is best known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, as well as the world’s longest-running play——The Mousetrap. Her works have sold over a billion copies in the different language. And Then There were None is undoubtedly one of the most striking parts. (Christie A, 2001)

1.1.2 About And Then There were None

And Then There were None which is the originator of detective stories about the nursery rhyme killing mode and it is also Agatha Christie's classic work. As the title says, the personae come to an island, and no one comes out alive at last. Like the nursery rhyme, the ten little china figures on the table disappeared one after another, and the people died one after another. But no one else can be found on the island, so the killer must be one of them. People wonder who is the killer. Why did the murderer kill those who seem to have nothing to do with it? The killer kills everyone, and who kills the killer finally? The contradiction between the psychological description of the characters and their own oral discourse, the actual domination of the psychological behavior of the character's behavior, and the role of the novel structure are worthy of attention. This article focuses on analyzing the psychological description of the characters in And Then There were None. (Liu Wenyang, 2014:22-24)

1.2 Purpose and significance of the study

The psychological description of a person in a literary work is a description of a person's inner activity, mental state, emotional feelings, and the like. Psychological description often plays the role of expressing the spiritual appearance of the character, characterizing the character of the character, and highlighting the theme of the work. There are many types of psychological description methods, such as direct psychological description, indirect psychological description, illusion description and so on.

Although Agatha Christie deeply analyzes the nature of human nature in the novel, so that the readers can clearly see the universal commonality of human beings hidden behind the motive, still, the study of psychological descriptions in And Then There were None can further make the readers understand the characteristics of detective novels, enable them to have a new understanding of the characters in the novel, and then re-interpret and understand the novel; what is more, it has important reference for the higher-level research topic of the literary value of popular literature represented by detective novels and criminal literature. (Liu Jia, 2018:87)

1.3 Literature review

In And Then There were None, the lack of detective role makes the character dialogue weaken from the two-way nature of "Detective—Suspect" and become a multi-angle network dialogue between "Suspect—Suspect". Without a detective role, how can the readers act as detectives themselves to find clues in the reasonable rhetoric of everyone?

 Some do research from the perspective of psychology. In Psychology and Literature (2014), Carl Gustav Jung once mentioned that psychology can be used to study human psychological activities, and can also be used to study the creation and development of literary works, because human psychology is the foundation on which all science and art are based. Men Shiyao and Zhao Qing (2018) research the stream of consciousness literary language. The stream of consciousness literary language breaks the law of traditional expressions, and uses complex associations, reversed time series, and inner monologues to present complex psychological changes. The writer uses these three expression techniques to describe the protagonist's psychological change process in a large part, and to add his own thought flow to the novel characters, and to use the expression of the stream of consciousness in a prominent way, so that the novel is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. Some researchers probe the language arts from character languages in And Then There were None. Huang Wei (2015) points out that the author abandons the common "something thought", "someone thinks" such a prompt, and directly presents the reader's five inner monologues. There are a lot of information in the “stream of consciousness” of five different characters, which have the embodiment of different characters. More importantly, the psychological activities here suggest the development of the storyline. This method of psychological activity to enrich the plot is fully utilized by Christie, adding a different color to her detective novels.

2. The Psychological Description of Characters in And Then There were None

2.1 Relationship between language and psychology

No one would disagree with the notion that language and cogitation interact in many significant aspects. Psychology is about how humans relate to each other and aims to expound how human behaviors affect social dynamics. Language is the primary instrument of people’s everyday interpersonal relationships—more than anything else; people are always communicating with each other.

Therefore, essentially, psychology is the foundation on which linguistics is established. Linguistics is a branch of psychology that focuses on how humans understand, produce and process language. There is also a branch of Psychology that studies communication, including language and non-verbal communication whose aims to understand how people communicate with each other.

Language is also something that happens in brains, and for spoken words, is produced by biological mechanisms. Language is thought to be one of the central psychological functions and studying how this phenomenon occurs helps to shed light on how the human mind operates. Overall the study of language and psychology overlap in many ways, and each contributes to the study of how the human brain works in respects to communication and linguistics.

In And There were None, Christie uses the contradiction between dialogue and self-psychological description. By juxtaposing these two sets of different paroles, let the readers who are "Detectives" judge by themselves. Of course, such narrative strategies are also very easy for readers to be controlled and manipulated by the author, and writers are often satisfied with it. (Wang Wenxiang, 2013:89)

Eight guests and two servants hold sinister design in their mind. After dinner, Miss Brent went with Secretary Claythorne to hear the voice of the sea on the rooftop.

In the drawing-room the French windows were open on to the terrace and the sound of the sea murmuring against the rocks came up to them.

Emily Brent said, ‘Pleasant sound.’

Vera said sharply, ‘I hate it.’

Miss Brent’s eyes looked at her in surprise. Vera flushed. She said, more composedly:

‘I don’t think this place would be very agreeable in a storm.’ (Christie, 2009:35)

In connection with the hidden worry of Claythorne at the beginning, she must have sinned related to the sea.

2.2 The sorts of psychological description

Among the methods described by many characters, psychological description is very important. It is a commonly used method in novels, dramas, prose and narratives. Appropriate descriptions of the psychological activities of the characters can reveal the character characteristics of the characters, reflect the changes of the characters' thoughts, promote the development of the plot, and deepen the theme of the article. The complexity and diversity of people's psychological activities determine the variety of manifestations of psychological description. Christie flexibly used a variety of detailed description techniques to successfully create many distinctive character image, an old judge with complex personality, perseverance, and adherence to his own values; a female teacher with twisted human nature who act absurdly in the name of love but finally abandoned by love; Lombard, an activist with frivolous behaviour, selfishness and mercilessness and so on. Christie highlighted the personality of the character in a realistic and three-dimensional way, which greatly enhanced the artistic appeal of the novel. There are many psychological descriptions in writing: direct description, lyric monologue, dreamland description, psychological analysis, expressions, actions, environment setting, illusion display and so on. These examples will be elaborated in conjunction with And Then There were None.

The following psychological descriptions are typical in And Then There were None:

2.2.1 Direct description

This is the most common and widely used method of character psychology, Some sentences contain key words such as "think" as obvious signs. The word "think" appears either before psychological activity or after psychological activity.

Through the combination of inner monologue and psychoanalysis, the author presents the rich and complex psychological activities of the characters in a meticulous, vivid and realistic way.

For example:

She thought to herself:

‘It’s horrible--just like us this evening...’

...

Death was for--the other people... (Christie, 2009: 72)

This fragment revealed Vera’s selfishness and cruel side.

2.2.2 Lyric psychological monologue

This method of portraying the character's psychology is to use the lyrical brushwork to show the inner contradictions and ideological struggles of the characters.

For example:

Dying! It was as though a sharp little gimlet had run into the solid congealed mess of Emily Brent’s brain. Dying? But she wasn’t going to die! The others would die——yes——but not she, Emily Brent.

...

All her people were Service people. They faced death unflinchingly. They led upright lives just as she, Emily Brent, had led an upright life... She had never done anything to be ashamed of... And so, naturally, she wasn’t going to die... (Christie, 2009: 159-160)

Miss Brent’s lyrical monologue shows the contradiction between her inner and real behavior. She said that she did not do anything to be ashamed of, but in fact she forced her maid to die; She said she was not afraid of death but she used “Service people” to be her own amulet. Brent, as a nun, cannot tolerate the moral degradation, but in fact, she was so jealous. She did not think that it was a mistake to drive her maid out, and she put sin on the maid. Miss Brent is a hypocritical moral guardian.

2.2.3 Dreamland description

Dreamland is a concentrated expression of people's thoughts. It can also indicate the personalities of the characters and intensify the subject of the article.

Dr Armstrong was dreaming...

It was very hot in the operating-room...

...

Who was it that he had to kill?

...

Look out, man, look out. Nurse, steady it-- steady it--

With a start Dr Armstrong woke up. It was morning. Sunlight was pouring into the room. (Christie, 2009: 73-74)

In Dr Armstrong’s dreamland, he recalled the scene of his drunkenness on the operating table many years ago that caused the death of the patient. It shows that he was frightened to be revealed, he didn’t want to lose his high salary and reputation.

Shortly, dreams are a kind of "refraction" in the realities of people's thoughts, feelings, moral qualities, wishes, concerns, etc., and dreams also reflect the moods, features and thoughts of the dramatis personae in the works. (Zhou Qiyuan, 2018:177)

2.2.4 Expressions

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