Conan Doyle presents Thaddeus Sholto at the start of Chapter 4 with the immediate in detail description of his unusual look as he is noted to have ‘A very high head, a bristle of red hair all round the fringe of it, a bald, shining scalp which shot out from among it like a mountain-peak from fir-trees’. This simile describing his bald head, ‘Like a mountain-peak from fir-trees’ is almost used as a hyperbole to make the not usually affiliated with good looks characteristic stand out inferring that Conan Doyle wanted the reader from the start to find Sholto’s appearance, in a way, horrid and disgusting.
This adjective ‘bald’ is then contrasted with ‘youth’ later in the paragraph as he is said to have, ‘in spite of his obtrusive baldness, he
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By doing this, Conan Doyle creates more unease for the reader as they simply do not know if they should trust this man whose bald patch is so obtrusive that it looks like a mountain-peak.
Sholto’s room is portrayed by contrasting it with the rest of the house by describing it as a ‘sorry house’ and using the simile ‘as a diamond of the first water in a setting of brass’. This creates a sense of mystery beauty and foreignness by calling the room a ‘diamond’ - a gem so expensive, exquisitive and rare. Conan Doyle carries on with this description of mystery beauty using adjectives such as ‘richest’, ‘glossiest’, ‘richly-mounted’, ‘Oriental’ and ‘luxury’ - all words which infer exoticness in the room and expensiveness toward the furniture.
By describing the room as a ‘gem’ of some sorts and describing Sholto as an ‘eyesore’, Conan Doyle has constructed a huge contrast between Sholto’s description and his interests giving the reader a preview into his personality: a disgusting outside look and a beautiful intriguing