47 pages • 1 hour read
Agatha ChristieWitness for the Prosecution
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1995A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Literary Devices
In Media Res
Like many short stories, “The Witness for the Prosecution” begins in media res, or “in the middle of things”: The story opens not only in the middle of Mayherne’s conversation with Vole, but also after several key events have already happened, including, most notably, the murder itself. In part, this technique serves as a way to save time in the relatively compressed short story format, allowing writers to cut straight to the main conflict while only briefly sketching out the broader plot. Within the mystery genre, it also helps to heighten suspense, with the lack of detail working in tandem with and heightening the reader’s desire to uncover the truth about the story’s events.
Perspective
Perspective is the point of view from which a narrative unfolds—typically first or third person, although there are rare instances of works that use the second person. “The Witness for the Prosecution” is told in third person limited through the eyes of Mayherne; the reader is privy to the lawyer’s internal monologue, but no one else’s. This restricted viewpoint is typical of the mystery genre, where a third person omniscient perspective would give away the identity of the guilty party. It’s also significant that Christie chooses Mayherne specifically for the point-of-view character. For one, Mayherne is an ordinary and perhaps even somewhat bland character; his personal life is largely unexplored, and he has few defining qualities beyond his professional competence. In other words, he typifies a kind of average middle-class Englishman of the time, and this relative featurelessness allows him to function as a stand-in for a broad swath of readers. Relatedly, what Christie does say about Mayherne—that he’s methodical, discerning, and unemotional—suggests that he’s likely to be a good judge of character. Taken together, these two things encourage the reader to identify with Mayherne and adopt his views as their own. Mayherne’s belief in Vole’s innocence thus makes the story’s final twist land even harder.
Red Herring
In the mystery genre, a red herring is an apparent clue or lead intended to distract from the truth. Although writers often use red herrings as a way of diverting the reader’s attention (and consequently amplifying the shock value of the story’s conclusion), “The Witness for the Prosecution” is notable in that a character within the story does the same: The letters to “Max,” and in fact the entire figure of Mrs. Mogson, are red herrings deployed by Romaine Heilger to draw the jury’s attention away from her husband’s guilt. Of course, these misdirections work similarly on the story’s readers, making Romaine a figure who is in some ways analogous to Christie, or to mystery writers in general
Suspense
Although all narrative fiction relies on generating feelings of tenseness or anticipation, suspense is especially key to the mystery genre, where the plot typically centers on a question or puzzle the reader hopes to see solved. “The Witness for the Prosecution” plays with this basic formula in much the same way it plays with the conventions of the genre more broadly. Because the story begins after the investigation into Miss French’s murder has already taken place, the usual questions about the identity of the culprit and their motivation don’t take center stage. Instead, as Mayherne becomes convinced of Vole’s innocence (and in turn convinces the reader of this), the suspense of the story hinges on the outcome of the trial, and the question of whether an “innocent” man will nevertheless be sentenced to death. It is only in the story’s final moments that Romain admits Vole’s guilt, retroactively revealing that the main source of tension in the story was in some sense a distraction, and that readers should have been focused on the identity of the murderer all along.
Related Titles
By Agatha Christie
