Memory and Oral Testimony in Agatha Christie’s Elephants Can Remember

Abstract

Detection is a serious venture that depends heavily on oral testimonies and evidence. While partaking in the process of detection, the detective and the ones who testify put their capacity to think and memorise to test. Oral testimonies of people who witness or narrate the same event may vary due to the variations in the person- specific performance of the faculty of memory. The various functions of memory will also define and re- define a person’s knowledge about another person or an event. This paper is an attempt to trace such patterns of memory and oral testimony that decides the course of the detection of an event that happened much earlier, as portrayed in Agatha Christie’s Elephants Can Remember.Detection is a serious venture that depends heavily on oral testimonies and evidence. While partaking in the process of detection, the detective and the ones who testify put their capacity to think and memorise to test. Oral testimonies of people who witness or narrate the same event may vary due to the variations in the person- specific performance of the faculty of memory. The various functions of memory will also define and re- define a person’s knowledge about another person or an event. This paper is an attempt to trace such patterns of memory and oral testimony that decides the course of the detection of an event that happened much earlier, as portrayed in Agatha Christie’s Elephants Can Remember.