sherlock holmes

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Analyse the character of Sherlock Holmes, as presented in 'The Hound of the Baskervilles', and Explain his consistent appeal to readers and audiences.

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London in the era of Queen Victoria was a fascinating place to live. Flickering gas lamps lit the squalid streets, casting eerie shadows. Horse drawn carriages clattered along, carrying the wealthy and well to do. Crime was rife in the slums of London. Prostitution, drug abuse and murder were commonplace. There was much poverty and ill health; poor people lived in cramped, dirty and squalid conditions. Smog caused by the factories weighed heavily on the city, creating a dark, dreary place.

Public hangings were frequent and Victorian people feared crime greatly. At this time, an infamous murderer, Jack the Ripper, was loose on the streets of London, attacking women. He knifed and ruthlessly murdered many prostitutes, often sending body parts to the Police force to show off his crimes. However, the Police couldn't catch him and their methods were seen as inefficient. A number of officers were also publicly exposed and corrupt. Many Victorians had a deep resentment against the Police in London, as they did not appear to be protecting the public.

When Arthur Conan Doyle's character, Sherlock Holmes, surfaced in 1887 the Victorians immediately feel for the fictional character that lived on 221b Baker St. London. They liked the fact that he cracks every case and always defeated evil, although Holmes wasn't the only one solving these cases he had an assistant/chronicler; Dr John Watson. Holmes became the perfect detective, although in the stories Holmes was actually an amateur detective, not a member of the London Police force. When Doyle tried to stop making the continuous series of Sherlock Holmes in 1893 as he wanted to devote his time to historical novels, the public didn't agree, which concluded Doyle to receive death threats to keep Holmes alive.

Sherlock Holmes had become one of the most celebrated and famous fictional detectives in the world. There are many websites such as http://www.sherlockholmesweb.com/ that are dedicated to Sherlock Holmes.

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The character Sherlock Holmes appeals to readers as it is written in such great detail, the reader is roped into the book in such little time; desperately reading on to try to figure out which character committed the crime and exactly how it was pulled off by that character.

Sherlock Holmes also appeals to the reader because of his fascinating detective skills, his ability to solve a crime and to come up with a story for found evidence.

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The negative aspects of Sherlock Holmes is that he doesn't take specific doings seriously for example, in the Hound of the Baskervilles he sees the legend of the Hound to be for a person who is a 'collector of fairy-tales'. He also sees the supernatural to be unbelievable and fake; he is a very sceptical person which gives him a negative characteristic of being ignorant.
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Holmes can overcome the opinion of himself; saying this I mean he compliments himself, this is because of the amount of cases that he has overcome and completed has giving him a vast ego.

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Conan Doyle has given Dr Watson and Holmes both very different personalities this is to make them differentiate in their opinions or to make them see the same answer but from another angle. Dr Watson goes into a lot of detail and is very well prepared as there is a whole chapter dedicated to his one letter to Holmes also ...

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