Sherlock Holmes Essay example -- English Literature

Sherlock Holmes Sherlock Holmes is a famous fictional detective with his own series of books written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle between the late 1800’s and early 1900’s otherwise known as the Victorian era in England. The stories were set in London on Baker Street. The people of Victorian England loved Sherlock Holmes because he always got his man, and the police in their time could not get anyone. Another reason the English people from the Victorian era loved Sherlock Holmes is the way he solves the crimes. He is observant, intelligent, has a sense of humour, brave and makes deductions very well from almost nothing. Sherlock is a tall slim man with sharp piercing eyes, square shoulders, and known for his hat and pipe, which he smokes quite a lot. He sometimes acts stupidly to catch criminals or uses role reversal and take the criminals for fools. Sherlock Holmes is seen as an amateur detective that you can count on. In â€Å"The Red Headed League† Holmes shows he is truly a great detective by changing personalities to handle the suspects. He uses sarcasm, intelligence, his ability to appear calm and relaxed, sense of humour and of course his deductive and observant mind. In this story, however, he mainly uses his observant mind and sense of humour. ‘Until the comical side of the affair so completely over-topped every other consideration that both burst out into a roar of long laughter.’ He has the criminal copying from a dictionary for no reason, which is quite amusing. Then he uses both his sense of humour and observant mind when he says ‘Behind the obvious fact that he has at sometime done some manual labour, that he takes snuff, that he is a freemason, and that he has done a considerable amount of wri... ...lso, since Sherlock Holmes was a cocaine addict like most middle class people at the time, it appealed to them along with the fact that he was like the justice they were not receiving because he always got his man. The stories are popular today because they are set in London but not modern London Victorian London. Since they were written in the Victorian period the plot and structure of the original stories are seen to be well written, very imaginative and including a variety of characters, crimes and types of clues. Also since the police in the Victorian era couldn’t solve anything Sherlock Holmes was seen as a hero because he would always solve his crimes in a unique and flawlessly constructed way and since he was the first literary super hero working to help the underdog modern day people, including me, have to respect his stories, like them or not.