Points of View

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is written in first person with Dr. James Sheppard providing the voice of the narrator. The reader hears the whole story from James' perspective. In the end of the story, when the reader discovers that James has been keeping a record of the investigation, the reader realizes that the story they just read is likely that manuscript that James has been working on all along. This is important because it leads the reader to question what they have read. Poirot points out that in the manuscript draft he read, James was holding back on a lot of information. James agrees to revise the manuscript to include his guilty doings in it, but there is not guarantee that he does not leave out anything. Chances are, James, as the narrator, left much out of the story since the reader has no idea...