How dose Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Develop the sense of

Authors Avatar

James Whitlock

How dose Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Develop the sense of

Mystery and horror in

‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, (1855-1935),  the sublime master of tension and mind twisting plots and the creator of the world renowned Sherlock Holmes narratives and included in that, number is, possibly his greatest tale, the dark fiction, ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’. This story of misty horror on the wide moor of Dartmoor was achieved by Conan Doyle with his powers of astounding language, creeping suspense, and characterisation and by the sheer terror of his subject.

The structure of The Hound of the Baskervilles and of other Sherlock Holmes mysteries enables Conan Doyle to create a sense of mystery and horror to grip the reader. This structure consist of a clear pattern to the story, the air of mystery at the beginning of the narrative, where the reader is absorbed into the world of Sherlock Holmes and the facts and suspicions are laid before the reader, the middle of the story where the mystery takes its twist, turns and unravels its self, clenching the reader to its words with the promise of revealing the mystery’s meaning, and this is followed by the critical point of high drama, the end of the mystery and Sherlock Holmes reveals his true genius. This pattern is shown in its true brilliance in The Hound of Baskervilles where it is used to take the reader through periods of spine tingling horror and then periods of quiet mystery. An example of this plot structure success can be shown in The Hound of the Baskervilles when Watson and Sir Henry Baskervilles are upon the dark moor to track down a mysterious light, when they hear a chilling howl creep across the moor, they and the reader are frozen in terror by the blood chilling call, and then Conan Doyle drops the air of mystery into the plot, in the form of Watson seeing a dark figure upon a tor.  Who is this figure? Is he the possible villain? and what was that sound?. Conan Doyle has achieved mystery, horror and tension in his structure of a single event in his plot.

Join now!

The structure however would be rendered useless if it were not for Conan Doyle’s ability to create horror and atmosphere in a single sentence or paragraph with his use of language. In ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’ the atmosphere of fear he creates is a feat which really accentuates the brilliance of the narrative. The descriptions of the forbidding moor, the gothic atmosphere of Baskerville Hall or the sheer horror of the Hound all are examples of this. The reader is riveted to the text, he or she is not just reading the story but is in it, feeling ...

This is a preview of the whole essay