Amy Gallivan 11j
English coursework
Pre-20c prose
Question
Using the two stories from Sherlock Holmes write an essay on what you have learned about the character of the hero and his detective skills. Decide which story you believe is the more interesting detective story giving reasons for your choice. Refer to important extracts from the stories to support your views.
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Sherlock Holmes is a well-known and loved detective who features in sixty-eight of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous detective stories. Written in the early 19c and set in London, the adventures of Holmes and his companion Dr Watson (with whom shared a flat with during some of the tales) are ingeniously written. Conan Doyle was born in 1859 in Edinburgh, Scotland; he went to Stonyhurst School and did a degree in medicine at Edinburgh University. He began writing during the time he was in medical practice using it as a way to pass the time he had free during his work. However his writing soon took over from medicine and he became famous for it. Conan Doyle was influenced by Edgar Allan Poe who similarly to Conan Doyle created a detective with odd habits and amazing powers of deduction, which are two of the recognisable characteristics of Sherlock Holmes.
In all of his many adventures Holmes uses interesting and unusual detective skills including disguise (‘A Scandal In bohemia’) (this is the story of a King from Germany who was involved with a woman by the name of Irene Adler she has in her possession a picture of herself and the King which she is planning to reveal before the king planned wedding to a Princess daughter to another king, Holmes plans to retrieve it and return it to the King.) and very good powers of observation (‘The Speckled Band’) (a story of a family Named Roylott . One of the daughters of Dr. Roylott had suffered from a suspicious death the previous year prior to her forthcoming wedding when she had been found dying by her sister she had given her last words of “it was the band, the Speckled band.” Her sister now planning to marry herself was hearing the same low whistling sound that had troubled her sister before her death she suspected her step father Dr. roylott of the crime and calls on Holmes for help) to deduce his conclusions. Dr Watson, Holmes’s companion narrates the story. At the beginning of the adventures the pair are very close living and working together. During the course of the adventures Watson (who is a trained doctor) gets married, moves out of the flat he shares with Holmes at 21b Baker Street and returns to being a full time doctor. However in the ‘Scandal in Bohemia’ case Watson returns to find his old friend in the same old manners and habits as when he had left “To me, who knew his every mood and habit, his attitude and manner told their own story. He was at work again.”
