A very important influence to Conan Doyle for Sherlock Holme’s is a man who critics say Sherlock Holme’s was directly based upon, Doyle’s University lecturer Dr.Joseph Bell, Bell taught Doyle the importance of observation & using all senses to obtain an accurate diagnosis and judgment. Bell enjoyed impressing his students by guessing a person’s profession and hobbies by their appearance alone, this technique as been used in a large percentage of Sherlock Holme’s stories and was achieved by using the complex technique of deductive thinking. This, critics say was the source of the Sherlock Holme’s personality.
Finally in my list of people and things that influenced Arthur Conan Doyle is the Victorian times tabloid ‘Titbits’, Titbits was a very popular newspaper back in the 1890’s and their most popular articles included sensational and scandalous news about Criminals, famous people and fraud cases, very much like today’s ‘The Sun’ newspaper, The extraordinarily bizarre news & crimes featured in the newspaper influenced Conan Doyle to make his stories more original, bizarre and unpredictable.
Conan Doyle’s Literary Genius was superbly shown in his stories by his skill of portraying Victorian England in a very engaging way, for example he dramatizes the social dilemma of drug taking in Victorian times by inhabiting Opium dens/addicts and snuff takers into his stories, also the fact that Holme’s himself is a regular cocaine taker adds to it, great examples of this are in the stories ‘The red headed league’ & ‘The Man with the twisted lip’.
In ‘the red headed league’, Holmes using his superhuman skills of observation and deduction quickly deduced that his client, Mr. Jabez Wilson was a snuff taker, in the sentence “Beyond the obvious fact that he has, at some time done Manual labour, he takes snuff”. And in ‘The Man with the twisted lip’, Conan Doyle dramatizes the fact of opium addiction and opium dens, he describes the dens as dark gloomy & socially unpleasant places to be, this is shown in the sentences “approached by a steep flight of steps leading down to a black gap like the mouth of a cave” & “ I found the latch and made my way into a long, low room, thick and heavy with the brown opium smoke, and terraced with wooden berths, like the forecastle of an emigrant ship”, Doyle also describes the opium addicts as mindless,lifeless,urchins who do not have the briefest knowledge of the basic entity of time when that are under the influence of the potent drug, this is shown in the sentence “He was in a pitiable state of reaction, with every note in a twitter,
“I say, Watson, what O’clock is it?”, “good heavens! I thought it was Wednesday, he sank his face onto his arms and began to sob an high note.”
Conan Doyle inhabits a list of very important aspects of Victorian life into his novels, the two most notable are colonialism & patriarchal societies, colonialism in the Victorian times was a very important part of British history, as the united kingdom set up colonies all through Asia and Africa, The best way to describe a colony is, ‘An area of land which is governed and controlled by another country’.
Colonialism was portrayed in ‘the speckled band’ as Dr Roylott went to Calcutta in India to set up a medical practice, and in doing so he met his wife, this shows that it was incredibly common for Brits to go abroad and live in colony’s and maybe even set up a life there, this was a fact of Victorian life which Arthur Conan Doyle could not forget to inhabit in his Sherlock Holme’s stories, Another fact of colonialism in the Victorian times was the difference in authority and rights, and how the white upper class could literally get away with murder, if their victim’s were of an ethnic/native race, this was shown in ‘The Speckled Band’, when Dr Roylott murdered his native butler but did not get executed for doing so, as the punishment for murder in the Victorian times was execution.
The second aspect of Victorian England portrayed by Conan Doyle was the ‘patriarchal societies’, In a patriarchal society Men will always govern their own families by paternal right, and women had little or no control over their family and their financial attributes, this was shown as Helen Stoner and her sister could not touch the money they inherited from their deceased mother, unless they marry, and Dr Roylott, the male leader of the family easily exploited that rule by brutally murdering Julia Stoner before she got the chance to Marry and claim her inheritance.
Arthur Conan Doyle’s skill of indulging readers into the fantastically mysterious world of Sherlock Holmes derives from his talent of describing characters in peculiarly interesting ways. Sherlock Holmes has repeatedly been depicted as an extraordinarily intelligent and perceptive individual, evidence for this was in his superhuman skill of rapid deduction, and how by appearance alone he can come to an accurate conclusion of a person’s occupation, transportation methods and leisure interests, evidence for this is in ‘the red headed league’, when Mr. Jabez Wilson came to Holmes about his problems and Holmes trying to prove his detective skills said beyond the obvious fact that he has at some time done manual labour, that he takes snuff, that he is a freemason, that he has been in China, and that he has done a considerable amount of writing lately, I can deduce nothing else”, this surprising array of facts sourced by the clients appearance alone astonishes the readers, but then the reader’s are informed of how Holmes came to the deduction, for instance, “I won’t insult your intelligence by telling you how I read that, especially as, rather against the strict rules of your order, you use an arc-and compass breastpin, The fish that you have tattooed immediately above your right wrist could only have been done in china.”
Another Example of Sherlock Holmes intuition and rapid deduction skills is in “the speckled band”, when his client Ms. Helen Stoner came for help, and he quoted “You have come in by train this morning I see, You must have started early, and yet you had a good drive in a dog-cart, along heavy roads, before you reached the station,” Helen Stoner, shocked by the series of accurate information about her transportation methods demanded an explanation, in which Sherlock Holme’s confidently replied, “I observed the second half of a return ticket in the palm of your left glove, The left arm of your jacket is splattered with mud in no less than seven places. The marks are perfectly fresh. There is no vehicle save a dog cart which throws up mud in that way and then only when you sit on the left side of the driver.”
In addition to that, another effective way that Conan Doyle makes his characters seem interesting is in the clear contrast between Holmes & his companion Watson, Watson is depicted as this ordinary, middle minded, middle classed person, whose intuition and deduction is no greater that the reader’s. This clear distinguishment between the brilliant Holmes and the plain Watson makes Sherlock Holme’s seem all the more ingenious and special to the audience.
Conan Doyle’s descriptive skills is further proven by the way he describes the settings of his stories in a way that interests the reader, A great example of Conan Doyle’s descriptive skills is in his use of ‘pathetic fallacy’, in his stories, ‘pathetic fallacy’, is the representation of inanimate entities in nature such as weather, Landscape and structures to correspond with human feelings and atmosphere, or quite simply when the weather represents the mood/atmosphere of the scene in a story.
A Notable example of Arthur Conan Doyle’s use of pathetic fallacy is in the story “The Adventure of the Speckled Band”, Before Sherlock Holmes arrived at Stoke Moran Mansion, the atmosphere was described as immaculate and flawless as possible, a quote from the passage is “We drove for four or five miles through the lovely surrey lanes, it was a perfect day, with a bright sun and a few fleecy clouds in the heavens. The trees and wayside hedges were just throwing out their first green shoots, and the air was full of the pleasant smell of the moist earth,” When they arrived at Stoke Moran it was described as, “The building was of grey, lichen-blotched stone, with a high central portion & two curving wings, like the claws of a crab, thrown out on each side, In one of these wings the windows were broken and blocked with wooden boards, while the roof was partially caved in, a picture of ruin.”
The distinct contrast between the lovely summer’s coach ride and the dark, gloomy, ruin of Stoke Moran reflects greatly on the grimness of the task Holmes and Watson had been set. This provides concrete evidence of Conan Doyle’s ability to describe a setting that is interesting for the reader.
Furthermore Conan Doyle used various language devices in order to describe an interesting setting for the reader in his “Adventure of the red headed league,” when Jabez Wilson arrived at the location for the red headed league interview Conan Doyle used Exaggeration by quoting “from north, south,east,and west every man who had a shade of red in his hair had trampled into the city to answer the advertisement”, Doyle used colour imagery to provide a better image of the scene to the reader by quoting, “Every shade of colour, they were straw,lemon,orange , brick, Irish setter , livec, clay, flame coloured tint”, “popes court looked like a coster’s orange burrow.
The Sherlock Holme’s stories are structured in a rather similar method, the story always begins in Baker street where the client introduces a case to the detective, then in order to demonstrate his detective skills and to gain the clients confidence and trust, Holmes analyses the client, and example of this is in the ‘red headed league’ when Holmes said to his client Helen Stoner, “I have no doubt you have came in by train this morning.” After Proving his Detective skills to the client and after the client tells Holmes about the case, Holmes then usually visits the crime scene, in order to further deduct how the crime had been committed, if any.
The next step in the structure of the Holme’s stories is after visiting the scene of the crime he thinks about the case & Identifies the culprit, Watson usually senses that Holmes is up to something, Holmes doesn’t tell Watson the whole thing but only gives an hint, A great example of this is in ‘the man with the twisted lip’, after Sherlock Holmes stayed up all night smoking tobacco, he finally deduced the mystery, but he didn’t tell Watson who the culprit was or how the crime was committed, but he said “I think Watson, that you are now standing in the presence of the most absolute fools in all of Europe, I deserve to be kicked from here to Charing Cross, but I think I have the key to the affair now” “and where is it?” I asked, smiling. “In the bathroom,” he answered, “come on, my boy, and we shall see whether it will fit the lock.”
The culprit is then caught after being pursued, or killed in the case of Dr Roylott in ‘The Speckled Band,” After the Culprit gets caught, Holmes or the Culprit then ends the story by unraveling the plot and they announce how & why the crime was committed.
The Purposes of the Sherlock Holmes stories are mainly to entertain, as all of the cases are mysterious and they challenge the reader to solve the mystery Holme’s has been assigned, although it is fairly impossible because the cases always have hidden facts that are fundamental in solving the mystery but are not given to you, an example of this is in ‘the speckled band’, we are told that Dr Roylott has a cheetah and a baboon, but we are not however told that he had a snake, which effectively would have solved the mystery.
Another purpose of the stories were to signify the class divide in the Victorian times , such as between Men & Women, Whites & Natives , and to inform the audience of the various social issues that occur in the era.
In Conclusion the Sherlock Holme’s stories are an entertaining, evocative, epic example of the mental workings of a genius at his own field, and they provide a moral guideline to the audience. The Sherlock Holme’s character provide inspiration to the hundreds of thousands people who have read it and the millions more who in the future like I have, would come to enjoy it.
