the War

The War, the First World War of 1914–1918, forms the historical and psychological background against which several of the characters on Indian Island committed their unpunished crimes. It is not a direct event in the novel's present action but a remembered past that shapes the guilt, trauma, and eventual fates of the guests.

General Macarthur's Crime During the War

The most direct link between the War and the murders on Indian Island is the crime of General John Gordon Macarthur. In France, during the hell of active service, Macarthur discovered that his wife Leslie was having an affair with one of his officers, Arthur Richmond. The discovery came through a letter from Leslie that was placed in the wrong envelope—one meant for Richmond ended up in the envelope addressed to her husband. The affair had been going on for some time, including during Richmond's last leave. Macarthur's cold murderous rage gathered slowly. He managed to carry on as usual, showing nothing, and tried to keep his manner toward Richmond the same. He then deliberately sent Richmond to his death on a reconnaissance mission, knowing that only a miracle could have brought him through unhurt. That miracle did not happen. Macarthur later reflected that mistakes were being made all the time, with officers being sent to death needlessly amid confusion and panic. He thought people might say afterward that he had lost his nerve and sacrificed some of his best men. Only young Armitage, a perceptive boy, had looked at his commanding officer very oddly, perhaps knowing that Richmond was being deliberately sent to death. After the War was over, Macarthur wondered whether Armitage had talked, spreading the rumor that had caused people to eye him differently and withdraw from him.

The War's Aftermath and Psychological Impact

The War's legacy extends beyond Macarthur's specific crime. The experience of the War—its violence, its moral chaos, its capacity to make murder seem ordinary—permeates the consciousness of several characters. Philip Lombard, who abandoned twenty-one men of an East African tribe to die during a later expedition, operates with a survivalist mentality forged in extreme situations. Vera Claythorne's drowning of Cyril Hamilton, though not a war crime, shares with the War a pattern of death that is deliberate yet deniable, a death that looks like an accident or a necessary sacrifice. The War also provides a temporal marker: Macarthur's crime occurred in 1917, nearly thirty years before the events on Indian Island, yet its consequences have followed him ever since. He left the Army and bought a little place in East Devon, but he could not face church on the day the lesson was read about David putting Uriah in the forefront of the battle. The War, in this novel, is not merely a historical period but a source of the kind of untouchable guilt that U.N. Owen exists to punish.

Thematic Significance

The War functions as a symbol of the moral ambiguity that the novel explores. It was a conflict in which killing was sanctioned, in which officers could send men to their deaths and be praised for it, in which the line between duty and murder blurred. This ambiguity is precisely what U.N. Owen exploits: he targets people whose crimes were committed in contexts—the War, the operating room, the courtroom, the nursery—where the law could not or would not reach them. The War, like the island itself, is a place where normal rules are suspended, where death becomes routine, and where the distinction between justice and murder becomes a matter of perspective.