Formula Hoist on their Own Petards This saying

Formula: Hoist on their Own Petards

This saying comes from a type of cannon (Petard) that would often backfire • so instead of sending a cannonball and potentially killing the enemy, it would kill the people trying to fire it.

In this formula, the evil-genius plan backfires upon the criminal. • This formula functions of the ideal that good will always triumph evil and that there is no such thing as the perfect crime. The evil doer will get what they deserve.

This formula functions of the ideal that: 1. Good will always triumph evil

2. There is no such thing as the perfect crime.

3. The evil doer will get what they deserve. •

1. Appreciate the Genius of the Plan:

The plan should appear to be the perfect crime. • All details should be carefully laid out and nothing obvious overlooked. • It should appear to the reader that nothing could possibly go wrong.

2. Appreciate the backfiring of the Plan:

An unpredictable variable occurs and causes the plan to backfire. • •

Sometimes it's as if the universe would not allow such an evil crime to succeed or the evil doer to get away with it.

3. Sometimes there is a detective, but the focus is on the plan failing:

• The detective is only necessary after a crime has been committed, so often there is no character in the story acting as a detective. • A detective is sometimes a present character if the criminal is a repeat offender who has tested his luck on too many times.

Setting: • • 1894 Christmas Eve Late at night Middle of a Snowstorm

The evil doer will get what they deserve. • The evil doer: Ned Chivers – He stages a robbery on his own wife – His disguise was intended to from an African American man, with the idea that one would get accused and found guilty because of the lack of legal support he would receive. • This would mean that he would get away with the crime while letting another suffer for it.

What does he deserve? Death • He was willing to set up another man to possibly die in taking the fall for his crime. • So he got what was coming to him.

1. Appreciate the Genius of the Plan: • The Wife was all alone with no chance of any more witnesses. • The wife believed that the money was well hidden and that no one knew that it was there. • Ned had a good Alibi • The wife would have accused a black man of the robbery, so no suspicion would fall on Ned.

2. Appreciate the backfiring of the Plan: • The unpredictable variable: The Stranger Arrives • We think that the stranger is the bad guy who might commit a crime • Instead of being the bad guy, he is the hero as he saves Letty from the robbery. • He kills the intruder • She realizes that the intruder was actually her husband in disguise

3. Sometimes there is a detective, but the focus is on the plan failing: • No detective, but the truth is realized between Letty and the Intruder.