Summary: Not Quite Elementary, My Dear Watson

Connor Bratton

March 14, 2014

R. Anderson

English 1B

Not Quite Elementary, My Dear Watson

Undoubtedly the most famous Sherlock Holmes quote of all time, "Elemantary, my dear Watson," was never once uttered by Sherlock Holmes or written exactly so by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. However, Holmes did quite often say "elementary" and "my dear Watson". Sherlock Holmes, a fictional "consulting detective", was created by author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and first introduced in A Study in Scarlet. Holmes, while not the first fictional detective to be in print (that title has been coined by Edgar Allen Poe's C. Auguste Dupin), has easily become the most reconizable names in the genre. Holmes' first appeared with his partner in anti-crime, Dr. John Watson

That being said, A Study in Scarlet easily acendes to the tradition of "literature" and even that of Western Literature. The novella it self has proven to be a classic throughout history. Upon its publication A Study in Scarlet would have immediately been considered to be of low culture, pushed into the category alongside gossip magazines, popular music, escapist fiction, etc.; where as high culture was reserved for works in the arts, esteemed by the elite, such as the aristocracy or intelligentsia. Popular culture or "Pop clture" has found somewhat of a happy medium between the two. Being defined as the leftovers of culture when people decide what high culture encompases, many works such as Shaespeare, Charles Dickens, and even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle manage to straddle the boundaries. Throughout the years theoretical barriars between high and low cultures have been broken, allowing for a newly founded academic interest in works within popular

The switch between the teo generes allows the reader to clearly see literay elements such as genre, setting, point of view, character, theme, imagery, symbolism, and dramatic irony. Amongst the abundant literary themes seen throughout the novella, Holmes as a character teaches the reader and invaluable lesson which also happens to be one of the quintessential differences between him and everybody elese: the habitual disipline of not theorizing before having first aquired all the necicsary evidance. This lesson is first observed by Watson while on the way to the murder on Brixton Road through the exchanging of words between Holmes and Watson:

“You don't seem to give much though to the matter in hand,” I said at last, interrupting Holmes's musical disquisition.

“No data yet,” he answered. “It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the