RED HERRINGS AND (LITTLE) GREY CELLS: THE DETECTIVE IN LITERATURE
Ms. Manners
A Study in Scarlet, by Arthur Conan Doyle
ISBN-13: 978-0140439083
NOTE: Please make every effort to buy this edition of the book (Penguin Classics). There are notes at the back of the book that are going to be enormously helpful as you bridge the gap between your world and Sherlock Holmes’ world.
Throughout the course of this semester, we are going to study several different mysteries. We will study the clues and analyze the suspects. We will evaluate means, motive, and opportunity, and we will try to figure out whodunnit. We will also examine the detectives themselves, not just to try to solve the cases before they do, but as a way to understand the worlds they inhabit. A (fictional) detective is meant to deliver justice—to punish villains, to expose corruption, and to offer victims some form of peace. Understanding those detectives means understanding the values of their time and place.
Chances are, if you have heard of any fictional detective, it’s Sherlock Holmes. While he was not the first fictional detective (that title is usually bestowed on Edgar Allan Poe’s Dupin, who gets a dismissive shout-out in chapter 2 of A Study in Scarlet), he is the one who almost all other imaginary crime solvers are measured against. As we embark on our study of Detective Fiction, it’s only logical to start with him. In fact, it’s elementary, my dear Watson(s).
What follows is a series of questions to guide your thinking as you read. While you do not need to formally write out your responses to these questions, you should be prepared to discuss—and write about—them during the first weeks of school.
A clarification: While you don’t need to write your answers to the questions below, you do need to annotate as you read—underline phrases that catch your attention, look up words you don’t know, write notes to yourself in the margins, etc. Because you’ll be reading this at your own pace, and on your own schedules, it’s essential that you have a record of your thinking when we finally come together to discuss the novel.
One of the interesting things about Sherlock Holmes is that he is one of the most frequently re-invented characters in Western literature. Watch this brief TEDTalk about the character’s evolution. Before you begin reading, ask yourself, “what do I (think I) know about this character? When you’ve finished the novel, revisit the question. What has changed?
Consider Watson as both a sidekick and a narrator. What facts do we know about him, and where can we see his biases and blindspots? What kind of person is he? What kind of person does he think he is? What role does he serve in the narrative?
What kind of man is Holmes? What are his values and interests, and how do we know? What are his blindspots? What can we learn about him both from what he knows well, and what he has no understanding of? Consider when he is kind to people, and when (and how) he is cruel. What does this reveal about his sense of morality?
What do we know about the other detectives in the novel? How do they compare to Holmes? What purpose(s) do they serve, both as foils for the central characters and in terms of plot?
Characterize both Stangerson and Drebber. What kind of men are they in the present, and what kind of men are they when the narrative jumps back to the past? How do they compare to one another? Consider, in particular, the arguments they make to Ferrier about who should marry Lucy, and what has happened to them by the time they reach London.
What kind of man is Jefferson Hope? Look at the language used to describe him at the end of Part One, and compare it to the depiction of him throughout Part Two. What changes, what remains the same, and what causes those similarities and differences? (Keep in mind the shift in narrative perspective, too—when are we reading through Watson’s filter, and when are we not?)
Setting is enormously important in this novel. What does each place reveal about the people who inhabit it? How is London described, and how does that compare to the “Great Alkali Plain”? How does the desert compare to Salt Lake City? What about the different crime scenes? What do the places where the crimes take place tell us about the culprits and the victims?
While it isn’t really possible to “solve” A Study in Scarlet before Holmes does, we do have access to myriad clues. Keep track! How does Holmes make the leap from evidence to deduction? Which clues feel particularly interesting or important? Which clues give us the best sense of the murderer, or the victim, or the detective himself?
The shift to Utah, and the focus on Mormons, is undoubtedly a strange choice (Mark Twain famously satirized this in his short story, “A Double Barrelled Detective Story”). Why does Doyle do this? What is the purpose in changing the setting (both time and place)? What is he doing with his characterization of Mormons? Why include a real historical figure like Brigham Young? What implicit comparisons is he setting up between Ferrier and the Mormons, or between the Mormons and other frontiersmen?
What role do women serve in the novel? How does Lucy Ferrier compare to Alice Charpentier? What about the other women who make cameo appearances?
Endings are always important, but the resolution of a mystery is, in some ways, why we read them to begin with. Why does Doyle end the story the way he does? Consider the multiple types of endings:
a. How is the solution to the mystery revealed
b. How are the villains punished? (and who are the villains, in the end? How do we know?)
c. What happens to the killer?
d. What happens to the detectives?
e. What’s the point of that final line in Latin? (don’t worry—that’s what the end notes are for! The editors have translated it for you.)