Compare and contrast the Characters of Professor Moriaty with that of Dr Roylott.

English Coursework

Introduction

This essay is to show the contrast between two of the villains out of the Sherlock Holmes short stories, Professor Moriarty and Dr Roylott. I will talk about the differences and the similarities between the two villains and how the behave toward Holmes. Dr Roylott is a character from “The Speckled Band” where he killed his daughter by use of a poisonous snake. Professor Moriarty is a character from “The Final Problem”. By using the text of these books I am also able to identify and show Conan Doyle’s methods of characterisation.

The appearance is one of the primary aspects of a character because without imagery you cannot print a picture of the character in your head of what the character would look like. The appearances of the two villains are very different in build and facial and body features. Dr Roylott is a very large person, as it states in The speckled band, where Roylott meets Sherlock at Baker Street. “So tall was he that his hat actually brushed the cross-bar.” This shows that Dr Roylott was a man of great height. It also states after that quote “and his breadth seamed to span across it” This other quote about his build explains that not only was he tall but had a very large chest, and was very bold in his stature. This advantage of size was used to intimidate Sherlock by confronting him. The sheer size difference was used to Roylotts full advantage.

Roylotts face is described as being wrinkled and weathered, “A large face, seared with a thousand wrinkles.” This describes Roylott being quite old or as a man who has been quick to temper and he suffers with a vast amount of stress. It also shows that Dr Roylott is a man who doesn’t act like most people in his class status and is slightly adventurous and hard working. Conan Doyle use of “a thousand wrinkled” in an exaggerated from and gives more meaning to in that he seamed to have that numerous wrinkles which is able to paint a more accurate image of Roylott in the audiences head. Roylott is also described as a man of agriculture even though he is a man of anger and impulsive rage. “a peculiar mixture of the professional and of the agricultural.” This explains his professional abilities have bought him wealth and agriculture because of his intelligence. Being wealthy he dresses like a man of his status, in stereotypical dress-code and is said as wearing “a black top-hat, a long frockcoat, and a pair of high gaiters.”

This is a preview of the whole essay

Professor Moriarty is quite the contrary where he is nowhere near as large or bold as Dr Roylott. Moriarty is said to be more of a lean build “He is extremely tall and thin.” Moriarty is quite a tedious man in comparison of the body structure of the two villains but it doesn’t make any difference in Professor Moriarty’s intellectual abilities, and Moriarty does not need a physical advantage. Moriarty is also described as having a large forehead that curves out. This is in relation to his vast superior intelligence to most people, and Doyle used that imagery to try and make the audience see Moriarty as having a large brain that his head has to curve to allow space for it. Moriarty is also described in The final problem as “He is clean-shaven, pale, and ascetic looking.” For Conan Doyle to say that Moriarty is “ascetic” he is able to instantly make the audience think that he is a cruel man, but not adventurous. With Moriarty’s intellectual capabilities Doyle is able to make the audience think that he is not committing crimes, but organising them. It also says that Moriarty has a lot of self-discipline for himself.

The manner of the two characters is very different. Dr Roylott is a more aggressive man, whereas Professor Moriarty is a more rational man, and talks about something rather that acts like a violent boisterous person. Dr Roylott shows his extreme impatience and violent tendencies when he met Sherlock and Dr Watson, in Sherlock’s home. Roylott storms into where Sherlock is and began to shout at Sherlock about his daughter had been there earlier. Instead of sitting down like Moriarty he confronts Holmes in an aggressive manner and uses intimidation to try and get Holmes to tell him what he wants. Sherlock is not threatened by the show of anger and retains his rationality. In this Roylott realises that he is not going to intimidate Holmes and demonstrates his strength by bending a fire poker to show his power, and leaves with a threat, still trying to intimidate Holmes but also proving a point, he means business. Unaffected by this Holmes carries on with the investigation.

Moriarty is the complete opposite in physical aggression, for he isn’t as bulky as Roylott, but in the same way Moriarty attempts to intimidate Holmes, not by a physical show of strength but by a complex and articulate array of words. When Moriarty visits Holmes he insults Sherlock not long after he arrives, “you have less frontal development than I expected.” This is an insult where Moriarty is trying to say that Holmes is not intelligent enough to out perform Moriarty, in the sense that he will not be able to accuse him without evidence that Holmes will not acquire. This is an entirely alternate method in contrast to Roylott. Moriarty is calm, collective and does not proceed to violence and speaks in a relaxed manor that everything is satisfactory. Moriarty does not need to try and intimidate Sherlock because everything he says carries a lot of weight and he knows that Holmes has met an equally matched adversary, himself.

Moriarty acts more sophisticated towards Holmes than Roylott did, He is very polite in ways where he doesn’t do anything to Holmes in a threatening manor, and he didn’t barge in through Sherlock’s door when he visited him, where alternately Roylott did. He did insult him with words but didn’t need to act in any violent way, his threats towards Holmes shown that Moriarty wasn’t there to play around but show the full might of his power. He said “you stand in the way not merely of an individual, but of a mighty organisation.” This was in away showing Sherlock his strength that he has a sort of army of criminals that are willing to do anything to help Moriarty. By saying that it was a mighty organisation he could emphasise the power of it, and that it was his organisation.

Doyle uses the two characters manner and how they speak towards Holmes to create a kind of hatred towards the villain so the audience would prefer Sherlock to out perform the villain to create an obvious ending to a story that the good guy always wins. Its obvious that Doyle didn’t like this idea though and didn’t like the character Sherlock Holmes either seeing he tried to ‘kill off’ The Sherlock Holmes short stories in the Final Problem by allowing Holmes adversary Moriarty to out perform Holmes and kill Sherlock.

Moriarty and Roylott speak in very different ways toward Holmes. Roylott used shouting as a verbal way to communicate with Holmes. He didn’t just shout he made his voice aggressive and threatening. Roylott tried to intimidate Holmes by threatening him that Holmes would be hurt or killed, whereas Moriarty used his vast intelligence and the power of his organisation to intimidate Holmes. Both of the character tries to intimidate but no matter what either of them threatened Holmes with he didn’t take the threats seriously. Doyle made Sherlock almost immune to this aggressiveness and taunting threats, this then allowed Doyle to shout as much abuse and threats at Sherlock that was possible. This in turn would make the audience dislike that character because of what he was saying to Holmes. Holmes would never stand-up to the threat in a physical way but just laugh at them in a type of sarcasm, this allowed threats to be made with no violent conflict between the two characters.

Both Roylott and Moriarty are from good backgrounds of wealth and both have an excellent education. Moriarty was a great Mathematician and Roylott studied medicine. Even though both of them were wealthy and of great knowledge they were both insecure men. Roylott had shown his insecurity by the wild animals that patrolled his house at night (baboon and leopard). He was obviously in fear of people breaking into his home but also to keep other predators away, predators in the sense of people that were going to confront Roylott. The two animals would hopefully just keep opposing people away from burglary, or trying to attack Roylott but were slightly over extreme to have as a security system. Roylott’s insecurity could have come from India from the fear of other people and deadly animals. The animals he has were his strength, not himself. When Roylott confronted Holmes at Baker Street he wanted to show that he was a strong person and superior to Holmes. This was an attempt to make sure that Holmes left Roylott alone. He hoped that Sherlock would be so intimidated by the encounter at Holmes’s apartment and his show of strength that Sherlock would not confront Roylott. I believe that Roylott could not be confronted because he was a type of bully. Even though he could kill someone it was because he didn’t want to loose him money. This can also be referred to Roylot’ts insecurity because he felt insecure without his money and instead of confronting his daughter Julia and disapproving of her marriage he killed her with no actual confrontation but training a snake to killer her by a poisonous bite This also portrays Roylott as an extremely selfish man. He couldn’t even kill his daughter in person, yes there would had been a larger chance of Roylott being identified as the murder easily but he didn’t even ask his daughter to stop the marriage, instead he killed her to make sure it didn’t happen and couldn’t confront her. This relates back to intimidating Holmes because if Sherlock was in fear of him Sherlock wouldn’t confront him.

Moriarty doesn’t show a huge amount of insecurity because Moriarty knows that he has a superior intellect over most people, whereas Roylott is intelligent but he shows superiority in the physical power, not his intellectual abilities. Moriarty shows his insecurity at one point at the time where he and Sherlock talk. “You stand in the way of not merely of an individual, but of a mighty organization”. This can be seen as Moriarty hiding behind the power of the organization, but it could be Moriarty just purely showing his power to Holmes so that Sherlock won’t try and oppose Moriarty. The only other time that Moriarty shown a slight similarity to insecurity was when he swayed side to side in a nervous manner. Its described as, “forever slowly oscillating from side to side in a curiously reptilian fashion” This can also refer to his appearance. The reptilian fashion seams to resemblance Moriarty looking around nervously and curiously as if he was insecure in Sherlock presence and was in fact afraid of him.

In conclusion to this Roylott and Moriarty shown little resemblance apart from both of them were of good background and of excellent education. The only other resemblance that I did recognise was that both of them were insecure men. Roylott shown more insecurity than Moriarty but he was also an extremely different person to Moriarty, in that Roylott was very selfish towards his daughters that he was not whiling to give up all his money to make them happy shown that he wasn’t the most caring of fathers or most caring of people, plus he was on an obvious start to insanity due to his unusual activities and odd past behaviour. Thus Roylott was a disturbed man but still made a respectable villain. Moriarty didn’t really show his insecurity apart from the attempted to hide behind his organization in the conversation he had with Holmes. They were both very different people really due to that fact the both had very different goals and ideas. They both committed crimes that Holmes knew about but Moriarty was able to get the upper hand unlike Roylott who ended up in an ironic death by the snake that he used to kill his daughter. Professor Moriarty and Dr. Roylott were indeed two tremendously different people. I have seen no particular contrast between the two characters in many forms.

By Ben Wilkins