RR 4.- Style

Reading Response #4.

Style: Two Sided Coin

          For my forth reading response I am doing it on the very first Sherlock Holmes story A Study in Scarlet. Thought I never finished A Study in Scarlet in time for when this blogpost had to be due, I was interested in whether or not the style of Conan Doyle's writing had changed, and I was particularity interested in how Holmes and Dr. Watson met, the effect of first impressions, and whether or not the characters Dr. Watson and Holmes changed. Where I left off I realized that the story had switched from the point of view of Dr. Watson and Sherlock Holmes to the point of view of the culprit, I am assuming. Why would Conan Doyle set it up that way? Some advantages some disadvantages?

          Sometime our lives take weird and twisted turns that lead us towards the better. For Dr. Watson, meeting Sherlock Holmes was the best thing that happened to both of them. Sherlock Holmes the genius extraordinaire and Dr. Watson, his beam of light. In The Hound of The Baskerville Holmes quoted “It may be yourself luminous, but you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it” (Doyle, The Hound of The Baskervilles 3). Dr. Watson is a great asset to Holmes, and when they first met Holmes took an instant liking to him. Upon meeting Dr. Watson, Sherlock Holmes proves his unique character by guessing without any previous knowledge where Dr. Watson had came from, Afghanistan. “ 'How are you?' he said cordiallly, gripping my hand with a strength for which I should hardly have given him credit. 'You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.' 'How on earth did you know that?' I asked in astonishment.” (Doyle, A Study In Scarlet 5). This amazement of how Sherlock Holmes figures out mysteries continued for Dr. Watson throughout the many years to come. He was still equally amazed at his powers of deduction later on in his career with Sherlock Holmes, as I have read in the novel The Hound of The Baskervilles.

          The greatest difference so far in A Study In Scarlet is that in The Hounds of The Baskervilles, for the majority of the novel Dr. Watson is the one solving the case. Holmes is still putting the more difficult strings together but behind the scenes. In A Study In Scarlet, even though Dr. Watson is narrating the story for the 1^st half, Sherlock Holmes is the one we hear about solving majority of the case, and putting loose ends together. Character wise, Dr. Watson and Sherlock Holmes didn't change very much. I found out more background information of the two in A Study in Scarlet, simply because this is the novel the two characters were first introduced in, and some background information can always be useful when trying to fully understand the novel.

         In A Study In Scarlet I left off from being in the Streets of London. Where Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson captured the killer, Jefferson Hope, the murderer of Ednoch, Drebber and of Joseph Stangerson. Soon after it switches to the point of view of someone unknown, around Utah. The unknown narrator tells the story of John Ferrier being saved by a tribe of wanderers in the desert. The three people Ednoch, Drebber, and Joseph Stagerson who were killed by Jefferson Hope were a part of this tribe. The quote “So rapidly did he gain the esteem of his new companions that when they reached the end of their wanderings it was unanimously agreed that he should be provided with as large and fertile a tract as any of the settlers, with the exception of Young himself, and of Stagerson, Kimball, Johnston and Drebber, who were the four principal elders” (72). This lead me to believe that John Ferrier was the killer, and had killed off majority of the leaders of the wandering tribe off. All he would have to do is change his name to Jefferson Hope. Also just before the 'switch of the coins' from London to Utah, Holmes and Dr. Watson had just caught the culprit Joseph Stangerson, then it switches over to the story all about John Ferrier. Or is John Ferrier just the 'red herring', setting us off from the real culprit? Is the person narrating the story the culprit? One who was involved greatly with John Ferrier, and the and knew greatly about his life, and was acquainted with Stagerson, Drebber and Ednoch?

          I admire the way Doyle sets up his books, I was pleasantly surprised by both novels I read. Both different in writing style yet the same in character methods of deduction. Much like the sides of a coin, different yet still related. I like how in The Study in Scarlet he switches the setting of the story to two drastically different places, yet still relevant to the story. In The Hound of The Baskervilles, he lets Dr. Watson do some solving of the case. I wonder how he sets up his other novels and short stories? Two novels that I really enjoyed reading, (though one I am not quiet done with) by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, that I will definitely recommend to family and friends.