Sherlock Holmes Research Paper

There are nineteen books in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s series of Sherlock Holmes, following genius detective Sherlock Holmes and his assistant Dr. Watson in their mysterious adventures. In The Hound of the Baskervilles, Holmes and Watson face one of the most difficult cases to date that they have been faced with. They both use their skills of examination and deduction to attempt to solve the mystery. Is there a bloodthirsty hound, trained to kill any Baskerville who approaches the hall? The book concludes with a reminder of Sherlock Holmes’ genius deduction and mystery solving skills. While Watson is left feeling both betrayed and astounded by his partner. In order to decide if Holmes is truly Victorian England’s greatest detective, there needs

This gives him the genius that engulfs the readers with his observation of every detail. Without it, neither he nor Watson would have managed to solve the mystery of The Hound of the Baskervilles. Throughout The Hound of the Baskervilles, Holmes uses his deduction skills to not only discover the culprit, but devise a way to distract him long enough to catch him in the act. Holmes deduces from Watson’s errors, both where Dr. Mortimer obtained his walking stick and the breed of dog whom of which had left teeth marks on it. Said dog was a curly-haired spaniel, confirmed by the following presence of both Dr. Mortimer and the dog, (Doyle, pages 4-8 ). While Holmes thrives in intellectual skill, he lacks the component of transparency towards not only his client Sir Henry, but to his partner Dr. Watson. If one is to be a good detective, they need to have the ability to work and cooperate efficiently with their partner or their client. For Sherlock Holmes to lack transparency, it means he could risk sabotaging a case or worse. The point of having a partner is to work together towards a common goal, and in The Hound of the Baskervilles, Holmes strays far from that point. Disregarding Dr. Watson entirely, he lies to his partner and client by saying he’d be doing other work on Baker Street. Once he is discovered, he proceeds to bluntly declare Watson as invaluable, while praising himself. The only reason that Watson partially dropped

Watson serves as a ‘conductor of light’, as quoted by Sherlock Holmes on page 3 of The Hound of the Baskervilles. Meaning that while some of his deductions are flawed, they help spark Holmes’ own thought process which ultimately makes the two into a great partnership. Without Watson as a guide, Holmes wouldn’t have been able to deduce where Dr. Mortimer got his walking stick from, and the breed of dog that left the bite marks on said walking stick. So even if Watson has errors, his deductions still have significance. Watson makes the deduction that Dr. Mortimer got the walking stick from ‘the Something Hunt’, which Holmes afterwards proves to be incorrect, yet guided by Watson’s error, (pages 1-3). In the case of transparency, Watson does what he can to be open and cooperative with Holmes. For the sake of Sir Henry, he keeps him in the dark about Stapleton’s plans to murder him, after discovering that Stapleton was behind the murder of Sir Charles Baskerville. If Sir Henry were to have been aware, Watson and Holmes may had not been able to catch Stapleton in the act. All throughout The Hound of the Baskervilles, Watson shows honesty and faithfulness in Sherlock Holmes. On page 183, Watson loses that sense of trust once he discovers that Holmes had in fact been lying to him from the beginning. Yet after being praised, returns to blindly trusting and telling everything he knows to Holmes. Only lacking transparency at the end with Sir Henry, in order to solve the case and