A Literary Comparison The Victorian period can be described as one of imperial expansion abroad and social upheaval at home. Evidently, millions left Britain’s shores either as ambitious merchants, ruthless warriors, or peaceful settlers consumed by desire to attain a safe haven. In this unique assignment, our core focus revolves around the representation of different colonial territories and their influences in Conan Doyle’s The Sign of Four and Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Beach of Falesa. According to prominent social thinkers such as John Ruskin, British Victorian respectability was plainly reflected in the amount of security that luxurious homes guaranteed. Ruskin asserted that a home was not a commodity or a necessity but rather a sanctuary …show more content…
As a result of our author's commitment to realism, the representation of this fictionalized colony is enriched with accuracy while Doyle's portrayal of the Indian Mutiny was strikingly unreliable. It is worth noting that realism is one of this novella's distinguishing characteristics. As a matter of fact, it genuinely depicts humanity's primitiveness including the natives' childlike gullibility, the traders' deliberate wickedness, and the missionaries' unwavering religious devotion. Another clear evidence of realism in Stevenson’s narrative is the use of dialect. While Doyle shrewdly weaves cockney into The Sign of Four, Stevenson's tale attempts to represent an evolving and unstable dialect of English generally known as Pidgin. In fact, the author's transparency is evident in his successful reproduction of the Pacific's trading language. Both of our intriguing stories highlight the fundamental interconnectedness which arose from trade and imperial expansion. On the one hand, British personnel were supposed to be ambassadors of British virtues and to remain faithful them regardless of the length of their deployment. As a result of their increasing distance from home, various people inevitably abandoned these values. For instance, Case has been in Falesa for such a long time that he no longer has a discernible nationality. Consequently, he revels in deluding the natives and exhibiting his apparent dominance while Jonathan Small's Achilles heel i.e. greed enabled him to turn his back on his primary