Sign of Four Critical Ideas

Question 1

Explain the idea of Sherlock Holmes’ link to London’s criminal underbelly

Answer 1

A good many of the criminal classes begin to low me - especially since our friend here took to publishing some of my coses. Ishor suppose thal Holmes started the habit of disguise for this reason, as A Study in Scarlet was the only cose so far written up and published by Watson. Conan Doyle suggests there are dorker explanations behind Holmes’ criminal associations.

Question 2

Explain the idea of flattery and disguise

Answer 2

11 is astonishing that Watson as on other occasions, folled to recognise al close range a man whom he knew so well, especially as he actually seen him start out in the same sealaring gorb a short while before. Perhaps Conan Doyko is suggesting that Watson ad see Holmes’s disguises but pretended to be taken in In order to spare his feelings or to flatter Holmes.

Question 3

Explain the idea of Watson’s Inexperience and (pretence of experience).

Answer 3

‘in an experience of women which extends over many nations and three separate continents. I have never looked upon a lace which gave clearer promise ola refine and sensitive nature. Watson’s innocence this experience of women largely Imaginary) is magnified when Home encouraged Watson In his naive arnice: “Now Watson, the fairer sex Is your department. “With your natural advantages, Watson, every day your helper and accomplice

Question 4

Explain the idea of narrative embellishment vs. late Victorian extravagance

Answer 4

Watson’s description of Thaddeus Sholio and his apartment show him at his best as a literary artist and gives a characteristic picture of the Opulent late Victorian drawing-room Watson Is accused by Holmes of taking liberties with the precise lacts in the Interest of dramolic embellishment of a narrative. yel Sholto’s opulent apartment seems entirely plausible.

Question 5

Explain the idea of Watson - eternal doctor

Answer 5

Thoddeus was a pronounced hypochondriac and when he expressed doubts about this mitral valve, Watson Instantly produced his stethoscope and obliged with an expert opinion is surprising to learn that he carried his stethoscope around when he was not in practice. This quirky delal reminds us that Watson’s prolession continues to Influence and dictate his new for riskier profession as Holmes’s partner.
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Question 6

Explain the idea of Sholo names blurred lines between Immorality and morality

Answer 6

What can have influenced the major whose name was the common one of John, to bestow on them the names of two of the lesser-known members of the apostolic bonda (see “Apostles in Christianity’). It would suggest a strong evangelical strain in contrast to the disreputable character of Major Sholto. The irony helps Doyle highlight the blurred lines between morality and Immorality, decency and and criminality.

Question 7

Explain the idea of Crime and unorthodox “policing’.

Answer 7

We first meet the Street Arabs Holmes employees in A Study of Scarlet but In The Sign of Four their number has increased from half a dozen lo a dozen, so perhaps more were brought in for training. The idea of more Street Arabs being enlisted could also hint to the rising crime rates in the late nineteenth century, and Conan Doyle’s nod to the fascination in unorthodox police methods.

Question 8

Explain the idea of street urchins’ Innocence

Answer 8

It is remarkable that the sentry placed by Holmes of Jacobson’s Yard, to give worning when the Aurora emerged, should have had a white handkerchief with which to wave the signal Few Victorian street urchins were in the habit of carrying hander kerchiefs and If one had done so.it would not have stayed while for long. The symbolism of the white hander-kerchiel, Inked to Innocence and purity, seerms misplaced in the hand ola grobby child, and their work for Holmes indicates certainly compromises their child-ke Innocence.

Question 9

Explain the idea of Holmes’ dramatic streak.

Answer 9

Considered the mosi thrilling part of the story. the chose down the Thames could be considered unnecessary and risky. In fact, they nearly lost the men they were after in the chase. Why did Holmes insist on 12 He wanted the chase just for the fun of it. In spite of his claim to be a cold calculating machine, there was a pronounced dramatic streak in Holmes which made him anxious for a striking denoument locase. After all, the world of Theatre proved to be an enduring interest for Conan Doyle.

Question 10

Explain the idea of narrators that frame’ the narrative

Answer 10

We have only Smalls word for the whole story ol the Agra Treasure and the events in the Andamans, and from such on old prisoner that may not be much to trust. Perhaps he really was connected with the Agra treasure in some even more discreditable way However, his is the only story we have just as the case of The Sign of Four is the only story we have from Watson

Question 11

Explain the idea of cultural knowledge.

Answer 11

Dr Boyd’s attempt to accuse Watson of never having been in India al all because he did not notice the absurdity of the names of the Indian men, exposes Watson’s lock of Interest in the culture and customs of the country he spent filme in. It is clear that Watson was not the only English man abroad in the nineteenth century who made no efforts to study the lives and customs of the native people.

Question 12

Explain the idea of entitlement to the treasure

Answer 12

Hilleling that Holmes and Watson assume thot the treasure belonged to Mary Morstan and Thaddeus Shollo - on what legal or moral His difficult to say There is some sympothy for Small Soutburst when he was condemned lor settisoning it, although of course he and his frie had no more right to what had been acquired by crime

Question 13

Explain the idea of Holmes’ attitudes to women.

Answer 13

Holmes’ attitudes to women. The novel provides several opportunities to view Holmes’s attitude towards women He tells Watson: ‘It is of importance not look
hot to dlow your Judgement to be blased by personal qualities assure you that the most winning wortien lever knew was honged for poisoning the
Pomong three the children for insurance-money and women are not to be entirely trusted - not the best of them’.

Question 14

Explain the idea of the Thames and Tonga

Answer 14

Watson forever associates the Thames with Tongo becouse of the events surrounding him during the pursuit of the ship Aurora, and make an allusion to the Andaman Islands when he describes the Thames somewhere in the dark ooze al the bollom of the Thome Dones of thot strange visitor to our shores Some chilcs have noted that Conan Doyle explores the lenslon belween the foreign on elements in his novel in the way he uses sellings for example, when Mary is reunited with Mrs Forester in their tranquil English home’
on home which represents modality and stability. The threat thal Tonga and the Indian treasure pose to Miss Morsion is exemplified in Watson’s feeline soothing to colch even that passing glimpse of ofronqul English home in the midst of the wild, dark business which had absorbed them
ad in Watson’s feeling that it was

Question 15

Explain the idea of distrust in the police - Ripper speculation

Answer 15

Conan Doyle not only explores the Incompetence of the police but he also captures the growing distrust of police forces such as Scotland Yard Such blurred lines between the justice system and criminality is exemplified by the way Conan Doyle’s audience and sell professed
Sherlockians’ ollen pilled Sherlock Holmes against Jack the Ripper who has been named as the foolish and ignorant Atheney Jones De Watson’s brother, and even Holmes himself

Question 16

Explain the idea of Holmes - the mind of a criminal

Answer 16

I becomes clear early on in the novel that Holmes os on Intelectual is unrtvolled by the officers of the Scotland Yard poilce force and in his owTI words he created his profession, and with il spoce for himself to function in, but at the same time outside of Victorian society. The ficw in others like Jones, is not that they are incapable of deducing facts but that they lock the imagination to think like the criminal himself

Question 17

Explain the idea of polson yet unknown to sclence.

Answer 17

Holmes sold lo Small at the time of his capture that the poison acts so quickly that the man was dead before ever you reöched the room. Watson dognosed it os “some powerful strychnine ke substance’, but no compound of strychnine nor indeed any poison worked quite so rapidly as this. Tonga’s native country must In fact have produced another of those virulent polsons as yet unknown to science that are so familiar in works of fiction, also helping Conan Doyle lop into the Victorian fear of the “other and the deadly dangers that lurk in foreign lands

Question 18

Explain the idea of Tonga: dehumanised then disappeared

Answer 18

Tonga is the only human being ever shot by Holmes the idea of him being less than human too monstrous to survive the chase on the Thames could provide interesting interpretations, especially as Holmes causes Tonga’s body to disappear altogether and even the cursed treasure of Agra, seen by some critics of a reminder of the colonial threats to the British empre, ends up at the bottom of the Thames. Of course, most of the information cited by Holmes concerning the Adarnons islands from his gazetteer was inaccurate. Many critics have notes thal Tonga represents the purest form of evil in the novel an animalisfic, uncontrollable savoge. Tonga embodies everything the Victorians fered in the colonies, his deformed features were linked to his savage nature and monstrous aggression Smal. It seems, sees him almost as a pel, loyal Though ‘as venomous as a young snake’ and a little bloodthirsty imp’.

Question 19

Explain the idea of distrust of Jonathan Small.

Answer 19

Some critics have noted that Smal, who has been in India the longest and whose closest companion is Tonga, has therefore also become the most criminal. He is no longer able to become truly “British”. Watson himself passes this judgment, ‘l hod now concelved the utmost horror of the mon, not only for this cold-blooded business but even more for the somewhat flippant and careless way in which he narraled 1. Whatever punishment was in store for him, I felt that he might expect no sympathy from me

Question 20

Explain the idea of Watson as Holmes’ moral consclence.

Answer 20

It is Dr Watson who represents Holmes’ moral conscience. Although not fully, he conforms more to the Victorian ideal of marliness as he is Inteligent, loyal and possesses a strong sense of moralty. He is, however, a bachelor who shares an apartment with Holmes. When Watson declares his love for Mary at the end of the novel Holmes states that according to him ‘love is an emotional thing, and whatever is emotional opposed to that true cold reason which I place above all things. I should never morty myself, lest blas my judgment’. Love and marriage do not confirm to the masculine type Holmes designs for himself: thor of a rational thinker who is wholly occupled with solving crime.

Question 21

Explain the idea of Dr. Joseph Bell

Answer 21

Joseph Bell had been one of his professors in medical school and Bell’s uncanny skill at observation and diagnosis was the basis for the Sherlock Holmes method Conan Doyle said Holmes was the literary embodiment of my memory of a professor of medicine of Edinburgh University who would sit in the patients’ waiting room…and diagnose the people as they came in, before even they had opened their mouths. He would tell them their symptoms, he would give them details of their lives and he would hardly ever made a mistake His great faculty of deduction was at times highly dramatic. Sherlock is utterly inhuman, no heart, but with a beautifully logical intent”.

Question 22

Explain the idea of Literary Influences

Answer 22

Dr. Bel’s deductive skills was not Conan Doyle’s only influence for Sherlock Holmes. He took something trom earlier writers of detective stories. Holmes’s ability to read Watson’s thoughts is taken from Edgar Allen Poe’s ‘Murders in the Rue Morgue’, willen half a century earlier in whicho detective does just the same thing. Also, the French novelist Emille Gabonau was the first to give an account of costs of lootprints, and to show that a clock or watch may be set to give a deliberately misleading clue Nor was the Holmes-Watson relationship unique. Both Poe and Gaborlau had given their detectives less intelligent friends or police colleagues, so that their own powers would shine more brightly Holmes’s skill in disguise is derived from Eugene Francois Vidocq the former criminal who in 1911 became the first chief of the Süreté (French National Police) and was said to have stained his face and to have painted mock blisters and letter marks on his legs when impersonating an ex-convict.

Question 23

Explain the idea of Sherlock Holmes: audience reception

Answer 23

Sherlock Holmes appeared as the great prolector of bourgeois society, and he was made more attractive by the lact that this personal life in come respects outraged bourgeois standards. Holmes was unmarried and never spoke of the softer passions, but there were other ways in which Holmes seemed strange and remote to those early readers, near the end of the nineteenth century. He loathed every form of society with his whole Bohemian soul, injected himself with cocaine las seen in TSOF), had periods of total listlessness and depression, and was contemptuous of any kind of knowledge that seemed unnecessary to his detective work

Question 24

Explain the idea of Dr. Watson: audience reception

Answer 24

achoice of Watson as narrator and as foll to Holmes’s acute Intelligence was masterly. For those early readers ale nineteenth century the
was reassuringly like themselves. honest, keable and determined, conventional enough to be surprised and a the shocked by new
et always ready for adventure, and prepared to do what seemed to him extraordinary and even ridiculous things in obedience to the commands of his genius friend. He is even prepared to disregard the low at times in deference to the superior justice dispensed by Holmes.
bottom of the Thames lie the

Question 25

Explain the idea of Police and Crime

Answer 25

nela Buckley, a British historian and trustee of the society of Genealogists. claims that the Victorian-ero detective who featured in Sir Arthur Conan Doyes
Doyle’s novels was based on Jerome Caminada’s life “Caminado became a national figure of just the time thol Sherlock Holmes was
pated. There are so many parallels that it is clear Doyle was using parts of this real character lor his. Buckley was quoted by the Telegraph as say
oh as saying Dubbed the Gorbaldl of Detectives. Caminada rose to prominence in the mid-1880s, shortly before Doyle’s debut Holmes vel A Study in Scarlet, and during his time as an investigator is said to have helped imprison 1.225 criminals