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Arthur Conan Doyle
A main disruptor of the Victorian domestic spaces in this novel is Tonga, the mysterious "other." As is eventually revealed, he is a native of the Andaman islands off India. In highly racist...
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Arthur Conan Doyle
The Blue Carbuncle, a classic. I think one of the first clues is when the stranger accidentally broke the window, dropped the goose and ran away. Why would he not try to catch the goose? Remember,...
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Arthur Conan Doyle
There are several types of images in the story, including figurative language and sensory details. Imagery refers to figurative or descriptive language that creates an image in the reader’s mind....
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Arthur Conan Doyle
Hosmer Angel is actually a fictitious identity, taken on by Mr. Windibank, for the purpose of deceiving his stepdaughter, Mary Sutherland, as found in the Sherlock Holmes short story, "A Case of...
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Arthur Conan Doyle
This is a really interesting question! Holmes scholars, you may have a better idea here, but I'll give it a shot. Darwin lived from 1809-1882 and Arthur Conan Doyle lived from 1859-1930. Darwin...
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Arthur Conan Doyle
Sherlock Holmes was an early version of a super CSI! He solved cases by his keen powers of observation AND by science. He used logic and facts to formulate his hypothesis and then proceeded to...
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Arthur Conan Doyle
The main way in which Conan Doyle creates tension in this part of the story is through his vivid descriptions of what is happening. First of all, as the car reaches the top of the hill, we know...
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Arthur Conan Doyle
I think the relationship between these two famous literary figures is captured through the way that Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson actually act as foils for each other in all of their adventures. A...
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Arthur Conan Doyle
The Valley of Fear is a novel that involves puzzles, murder, and Professor Moriarty. Holmes does not learn of Moriarty’s involvement until the end. He just knows that he gets a message written in...
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Arthur Conan Doyle
Ryder is the thief who is found to have stolen the blue carbuncle in "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle." However, at the end of the story after Ryder has confessed himself and begged, "God help...
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Arthur Conan Doyle
It should be noted that the story opens with two short sentences: She was a writing medium. This is what she wrote:-- A medium is a person who can supposedly communicate with the dead, so a...
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Arthur Conan Doyle
Climax is a literary term referring to turning point of a story. This is also usually considered the most interesting point. After the climax, things cannot return to the way they were. This is...
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Arthur Conan Doyle
In "The Adventure of the Speckled Band," Sherlock Holmes' client is a lady named Helen Stoner. She had witnessed her twin sister Julia Stoner die in their house and the only clue to the cause of...
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Arthur Conan Doyle
Miss Mary Sutherland is said to have a "preposterous hat and...vacuous face." She is a lady of some small fortune of "a hundred a year," left her by her uncle, who makes a living by taking...
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Arthur Conan Doyle
The writing in Sherlock Holmes books is pretty standard. For the most part, it is the same English we use today. It I just a little more old-fashioned. However, I would say the greatest...
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Arthur Conan Doyle
Colonel Barclay and his wife have a serious disagreement after she accidentally meets a man from her past while in the company of her friend, Miss Morrison. Upon returning home, Mrs. Barclay, named...
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Arthur Conan Doyle
I cannot speak for other people, but what attracts me to the Sherlock Holmes stories is how smart and versatile Holmes is and how complicated the cases that he solves are. In the Holmes stories,...
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Arthur Conan Doyle
We are not told for certain why the Ku Klux Klan wanted to kill these three men, but Holmes has a theory. He notes that the KKK started to fall apart right after the time that Colonel Elias...
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Arthur Conan Doyle
In Arthur Conan Doyle’s short story “How It Happened,” a spiritual medium, able to communicate with the dead, narrates a first-hand report from a wealthy dead man. The man had owned a brand new...
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Arthur Conan Doyle
Literally, the orange pips are the seeds of an orange. But in terms of this story they are a warning sign. They are used by the Ku Klux Klan in this story as way to warn someone that the KKK is...
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Arthur Conan Doyle
The man with the twisted lip goes by the name of Hugh Boone, and he is a professional beggar who makes a pretense, a show, of selling matches on the street. He has a particular trait of being able...
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Arthur Conan Doyle
The blue carbuncle is a very valuable jewel that belongs to the Countess of Morcar. It is worth a huge amount of money. It is stolen by a man named James Ryder. He is the "Head Attendant" at the...
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Arthur Conan Doyle
What Holmes does is he looks at something like the walking stick and tries to figure out as much as he can from it. For example, he figures out that the owner of the stick has a dog because there...
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Arthur Conan Doyle
Because the victim of the accident is also the narrator of "How It Happened" by Arthur Conan Doyle, the reader expects merely a continuation of the narrative by this character rather than his...
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Arthur Conan Doyle
The Ku Klux Klan was a real group that did spring up after the Civil War in the United States. At the time that it began it was dedicated to ending the Northern rule of the South during...
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Arthur Conan Doyle
There are a few different possible themes to this (outside of the simple suspense of finding out what happens to the narrator). First, you can argue that a theme is that little decisions made out...
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Arthur Conan Doyle
In The Adventure of the Speckled Band, Holmes is observant. Of course, this applies to him in ALL of the stories, but in this particular one, in the very beginning, he uses his powers of...
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Arthur Conan Doyle
First of all, I would dispute this idea -- I do not think that Neville St. Clair has "a lot of money" without begging (I assume that's what you're talking about here). He did not make all that...
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Arthur Conan Doyle
Sherlock Holmes is a good literary detective because he is entertaining. He has a complete understanding of human nature, but at the same time a complete disregard for other people’s feelings. He...
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Arthur Conan Doyle
Charles McCarthy and John Turner, residents of Boscombe Valley, had lived in Australia at the same time. They met when John Turner and his gang of thieves was robbing a gold convoy that McCarthy...
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Arthur Conan Doyle
Almost all of the Sherlock Holmes stories are told from the first person point of view with Dr. Watson as narrator. Dr. Watson is Holmes’s roommate, friend, and assistant. You can tell first...
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Arthur Conan Doyle
Sherlock Holmes is ranked #9 on the greatest literary characters of all-time list according to the book The Fictional 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Characters in World Literature and...
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Arthur Conan Doyle
In "A Case of Mistaken Identity," the evidence of Hosmer Angel's identity started building with the revelation of the motive for the mystery: Miss Mary Sutherland has a small fortune that she lets...
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Arthur Conan Doyle
One of Holmes’s favorite techniques is disguise. His disguises are so good that even Watson sometimes does not recognize him. In disguise, he can travel freely. Watson notes that Holmes has...
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Arthur Conan Doyle
Somewhere in his novel Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov quotes a little rhyming maxim for writers as follows: The "I" in the story Cannot die in the story. In other words, if a story is being told...
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Arthur Conan Doyle
Holmes uses a "brain attic," goes by himself to think, and uses a pipe to focus. Sherlock Holmes is very good at focusing. He has some techniques that he has developed over the years. One such...
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Arthur Conan Doyle
Holmes figures out that Henry Baker has not committed a crime, even though he was the man who was carrying the goose that had the stolen jewel inside it. The way he proved this was by getting Baker...
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Arthur Conan Doyle
The short story "The Red-Headed League" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is in the subgenre of mystery story. Mystery stories are a subgenre because they have particular and definitive elements and...
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Arthur Conan Doyle
Arthur Conan Doyle tries to create the required suspense, and has been quite successful at that, in his short story How it Happened by writing the story as a first person account. The main...
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Arthur Conan Doyle
The name of the man with the twisted lip is Hugh Boone. He is a beggar with a disfigured face and is very well known to the police. So, for a living, he begs. Holmes is interested in him because...
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Arthur Conan Doyle
Holmes claims, at least, that it shows that the man was an intellectual. He says this because the hat is big. (We know now that brain size does not equal intelligence, though.) The man was...
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Arthur Conan Doyle
The major similarity between these two stories is that both of them have to do with a man who has hidden his identity. In both cases, the men have assumed fake identities for the purpose of...
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Arthur Conan Doyle
Likely the only "school" that Doyle would be considered a part of is that of the crime novel experts. Obviously his most famous works were the various adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and though he...
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Arthur Conan Doyle
Holmes himself has a connection with music because he is actually quite a skilled violin player. He is often referring to famous pieces which he is familiar with and seems to have a peculiar...
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Arthur Conan Doyle
Many of the Sherlock Holmes stories involve surprise endings, so you could pick just about any of the stories as an example of this. I will use, as my example, "The Man with the Twisted Lip." In...
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Arthur Conan Doyle
In this story, the narrator goes into a great deal of detail about the car and its workings. He also is quite clear about the details of the physical environment. He is much more vague about...
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Arthur Conan Doyle
Mr. Jephro Rucastle wanted Miss Violet to do a few unusual things that would not be usually expected of a governess. Rucastle wanted her to be willing to wear any dress that his wife gave her to...
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Arthur Conan Doyle
The reader first meets Holmes in this story in an opium den. The den is located on Upper Swandam Lane in a very bad part of London. It is described as something of a hellish place and Conan Doyle...
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Arthur Conan Doyle
Manichaeism is a philosophy of dualities: the existence of good and evil principles with good relating to mind and the spiritual and evil relating to matter and the material. When this...