Generally, the Sherlock Holmes stories follow a similar pattern: There is usually a scene at the Baker Street residence, at which time a visitor appears and tells his or her story. In effect, Watson becomes a stand-in for the reader by asking the questions that need to be asked for a complete understanding of the situation. The reader shares withWatson his astonishment at Holmes’s abilities. Watson, in contrast, takes on an identity (although always in a secondary role) of his own. Although Dupin’s companion remains anonymous and the reader is unable to draw any conclusions about his personality, Dr. In addition, both have faithful companions who serve as the chroniclers of the exploits of their respective detective friends. Both Holmes and Dupin, for example, are eccentrics both are amateurs in the detective field both have little regard for the official police and both enter into investigations, not because of any overwhelming desire to bring a culprit to justice but out of the interest that the case generates and the challenge to their analytical minds.
Auguste Dupin bears remarkable similarities to the Sherlock Holmes character. It is the influence of Poe, however, that is most in evidence in the character of Holmes and in many of his plots. Doyle records that he was familiar with Mémoires (1828-1829 Memoirs of Vidocq, Principal Agent of the French Police, 1828-1829) and had read Gaboriau’s Monsieur Lecoq (1880). Regardless of the disclaimers and acknowledgments, there is little doubt that Doyle owed a large debt to Edgar Allan Poe and other predecessors in detective fiction, such as Émile Gaboriau and François-Eugène Vidocq. Bell, however, disclaimed the honor and suggested that Doyle himself possessed the analytical acumen that more closely resembled the skills of Sherlock Holmes. Joseph Bell, a teacher of anatomy at the University of Edinburgh, whose diagnostic skills he had admired as a student of medicine. Sherlock Holmes, as the prototype of almost all fictional detectives, has become a legend not only to his devotees but also to those who have not even read the works in which he appears, the detective being immortalized by reputation and through the media of movies, television, and radio.ĭoyle claimed that the character of Sherlock Holmes was based on his memories of Dr.
In spite of his desire to be acknowledged as a writer of “serious” literature, Arthur Conan Doyle ( – 7 July 1930) is destined to be remembered as the creator of a fictional character who has taken on a life separate from the literary works in which he appears. Analysis of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Stories
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