Holmes is the main character in all 3 stories and is the main reason of the popularity of the stories. Sherlock Holmes is the novel's protagonist. Holmes is the famed 221b Baker Street detective with a ‘keen eye, hawked nose,’ and the trademark ‘hat and pipe’. For all his assumed genius and intuition he is virtually omniscient in these stories, and Holmes becomes more accessible in the context of his constant posturing and pretension. The characteristics that make Holmes attractive to readers are: his integrity, trustworthiness, sensibility, rational decisiveness, lack of emotionalism and intellectual superiority. Watson (a Doctor like Doyle and Homes’ side-kick), brings humanity to Holmes, who without Watson’s sympathetic telling would come off cold, inaccessible and unpleasant, “It may be that you are not yourself luminous,” Holmes tells Watson, “but you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it”. The character of Watson may be another reason why people enjoy reading the stories. Doyle produced a friendly and kind personality in Holmes's companion, a character whom many readers may feel close to. The manner, in which Doyle wrote the stories, makes his readers feel like they are friends with Watson, and are sharing through his narrative, the exploits that he has had with his great detective associate. It is shown in many of the cases that Watson is a caring person to others around him. Understanding people’s attitudes and experiences at that time helps us to understand some features of Holmes’ particular appeal to a Victorian audience, the ‘Jack the Ripper scandal gave a loss in confidence in the police. So when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s character, Sherlock Holmes, surfaced in 1887 the Victorians immediately fell for the fictional character, as they liked the fact that he cracked every case and always defeated evil! He 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 kill off his famous character in 1893, there was a public outcry and Doyle received death threats warnings to keep Holmes alive! Sherlock Holmes has become one of the most celebrated and famous fictional detectives the world has even known and he is the main contributor to the popularity of the stories. Some of his chemical tests are even used today, his methods of logic and forensics was appealing. Holmes was so popular he even seemed real as letters arrived to 221B Baker Street! Dr Watson’s personality is depicted as a dim-witted and warm hearted companion whose admiration of his friend’s powers of deduction is immense. He is faithful and trustworthy and does everything he can to publish his colleague’s achievements that are usually stolen by Scotland Yard who so often seek help from Holmes.
In the speckled band Dr Roylott, the arch villain, is described as a menacing figure, big, large and looming, from the quote, ‘so tall was he that his hat actually brushed the cross-bar of the doorway, a thousand wrinkles burned yellow with the sun, bile shot eyes’. He spoke fearlessly and threateningly to Sherlock Holmes, from the quote, ‘we heard the hoarse roar of the Doctor’s voice and saw the fury with which he shook his clenched fist’. Dr Roylott is important to the development of the plot because he brings the mystery and suspense to the play as to how Julia died, this contributes to the popularity. Julia was a woman so in those days females were seen as weak and vulnerable, and Helen Stoner the victim’s sister also seemed vulnerable that is why Holmes was protecting her. In the red-headed league Jabez Wilson the victim is seen as obese. He began as a carpenter and works as a pawnbroker; he was the employer of Vincent Spaulding. He joined the red-headed league because he needed quick money and he turned out to be the catalyst for the action because they were using him to rob the bank. His character was seen as an ‘easy to fool person’, which created humour and subsequently contributed to the engagement of the audience. Vincent Spaulding was Jabez Wilson’s assistant and his character was described as ‘young, clean shaven and bright’. He was involved in the bank robbery and was quoted to have ‘dirty knees while climbing through the tunnel’. John Clay the villain was known to have ‘royal blood’ and he was known as ‘a con-man’. He went to oxford and was posh and privileged; he was young and looked like a boy. He leaves the trail and cannot be found until Sherlock Holmes steps in. His pompous and dodgy character creates tension and engages the audience; this engagement contributes to the popularity of the red-headed league. In the Adventures of Black Peter, Peter Carey the victim and eventually the villain, was seen as an unpleasant man, especially when he was drunk. He had a reputation for being violent, even having been prosecuted once for assaulting the local vicar. His character made Black Peter popular because there was a lot of action due to him in the story.
In all 3 stories we can see that there are 1 or 2 other characters (victim and villain), after Sherlock Holmes that helps to make the stories popular. This is because those characters I mentioned are the catalyst for the action and they create mystery, suspense and reader engagement due to the action. They also create imagery through the action. They create the problems for Sherlock Holmes to solve, so they are vital in contributing to the popularity.
In the late nineteenth century, policemen were generally disliked and treated with little respect. Doyle used this knowledge in many of the cases where Holmes is called to investigate, after the police have tried and failed to find a solution. For example, in "The Adventure of the Norwood Builder", the police arrest Mr John Hector McFarlane, on the suspicion of murdering Mr Jonas Old acre. Holmes deduces that Mr Old acre is still alive and well, and he uses his skills to make the man reveal himself to the police. Therefore, as the character of Sherlock Holmes was able to use his powers of deduction to solve cases which the police were finding difficult, he occasionally made a fool of the police, which is possibly one aspect that the original readers enjoyed. During Doyle's early Sherlock Holmes fame, he was invited to assist Scotland Yard with their enquiries into the Jack the Ripper murders. The invitation to Doyle was used to deflect public criticism of the police force with regard to their failure to solve the crimes. Furthermore, these "Ripper Murders" may have succeeded in increasing the public's interest in the genre of detection and the morbid fascination with murder and other gruesome events, thus indirectly increasing the popularity of the Holmes mysteries.
The language that Conan Doyle uses is also vital in contributing to the popularity of the play. The effect of Conan Doyle’s sentence variety in the Speckled Band builds tension among the reader, there would be a long sentence that stretches something and then it could be immediately followed by a short sentence to make it more dramatic. The long sentence tells you the main point and the short sentence emphasises it. From the text ‘suddenly amidst all of the hubbub of the gale, there burst forth the wild scream of a terrified woman’, followed by, ‘I knew that it was my sister’s voice’. This shows the point that I made before. The descriptions of action are very engaging and dramatic to the reader like, ‘when suddenly there broke from the silence the most horrible cry. It swelled up louder and louder, a hoarse yell of pain and fear and anger all mingled in the one dreadful shock’. Here evocative language is used to engage the reader, this contributes to the popularity. He uses descriptive vocabulary to describe the action like, ‘we heard the hoarse roar of the doctor’s voice and saw the fury with which he shook his clenched fist’, and as a result we can get an image of what is happening in our head. His use of pathetic fallacy, ‘he has bile-shot eyes’, give effect to the story. His good use of vocabulary and imagery also make us feel as though we’re part of the story which is why it’s so popular. In the red headed league he also uses descriptive and engaging language to hook the reader. There is an essence of mystique hidden behind the language he uses to create suspense. He also uses a sense of danger to create more tension and suspense. He doesn’t give away too much information at the beginning, he stretches engaging language to keep us hooked and cleverly builds up to an enthralling climax. Conan Doyle also uses humour to enhance the story, mainly through the character of John Clay. He, as I mentioned before, is a pompous character which in effect creates humour and subsequently engages the audience. Jabez Wilson uses silly language, you could almost laugh at him like, ‘How did you know for example, that I did manual labour? It’s true as a gospel, and I began as a shops carpenter’. This language also creates humour and engages us; the engagement due to the language contributes to the popularity of the story. In the adventures of Black Peter he uses descriptive devices to enhance the text and engage the audience. He sets a vivid image of the setting, from the quote, ‘the floor and walls were like a slaughterhouse’. This simile makes us do the denotation to connotation process, we think of blood in the cabin. He uses descriptive sentences like, ‘there was a bunk at one end and a sea-chest, map and charts, a picture of the sea unicorn, a line of log books on a shelf, all exactly’. These kinds of sentences create imagery inside our head of the cabin, which engages us.
So the language used in the story is also vital in contributing to the popularity of the stories, mainly because of the user engagement as a result of the langue used. Good language used creates a good crime story which adds to the popularity.
I think that the Conan Doyle crime stories have been so popular due to a number of elements, like the clever solutions, bizarre ideas and the reader involvement. Doyle's mysteries tend to centre around situations. He tends to present the reader with some extremely puzzling situation, one that is difficult to explain. He then solves the mystery, by developing some brilliant twist that stands the apparent situation on its head. The bizarre ideas and reader involvement are created by imaginative events that take place in the stories. The reader becomes enthralled due to these elements and finds the stories magical which is why the stories have been so popular. One reason for the appeal of the stories may be the originality of the way in which the crimes were solved. Also, as the police force had only been set up in 1814, and the detective division in 1842, the methods used in solving real cases were still very basic. Consequently, the readers would not have had much knowledge of ways of deduction and so often the plots of the stories were seen to be quite technical, and the way the crimes were solved even more so. It is a genre, which allows the reader to feel that they are indirectly participating in the process of deduction and possible solution of a mystery. The methods which Holmes uses to solve problems he encounters are quite extraordinary. For example in "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle", Holmes studies a stranger's hat: " ‘He is a man who leads a sedentary life, goes out little, is out of training entirely, is middle-aged, has grizzled hair which he has had cut within the last few days, and which he anoints with lime-cream.' Many readers find this skill fascinating, which in turn encourages them to read other stories of the detective. The popularity of the genre today, like the ‘whodunit’ element and police and forensic element is also why the stories have been so popular because it seems like modern crime fiction. Finally, I suggest that the nostalgic appeal of Sherlock Holmes draws people to the books, particularly older readers who find pleasure in reading about times past. In recent years stage plays, films and television adaptations have reinforced people's appreciation of the great detective and his world of mystery and crime. A further reason for the stories' success is that people just like to relax and enjoy a good book, slipping into a fictional world where the stresses of modern life are not present. A poem entitled "What is it that we love in Sherlock Holmes?" by Edgar Wadsworth Smith suggests this in the first stanza: "We love the times in which he lived. The half-remembered, half-forgotten times of snug Victorian illusion, of gaslit comfort and contentment, of perfect dignity and grace."
