The Fatal Weakness In The Depth Of Human Nature

Agatha Christie's writing career spanned more than half a century, during which she produced 66 full-length impossible crime stories and novels. She remains one of the most popular mystery writers of all time. Deeply impressed by Freudian Psychoanalytic Theory, Christie analyzes and studies the criminal motivation, criminal mentality, and the criminal's act and talk, so as to probe into the subtle human nature.The analysis of the three typical types of murderers is based on Freud's Psychoanalytical theory in this paper. The three typical types of murderers—passionate avengers, psychopathic killers and perilous nobody that are shown in Christie's detective fiction frequently to study the characteristics of the criminal. With the employment of theories including the unconscious, the structure of personality, the development of personality and the defense mechanisms, the paper aims at analyzing the depth and extent of the criminal's mentality of each type, finding out the reason of the formation of their personality and reveals the fatal weakness in the human nature.