![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
spacemutineer.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
sherlock60Welcome back, everyone! A quick update about the poll: 100% of you said you wanted to keep the discussion questions. Wow! I'll definitely keep it up then. Thanks for voting and thanks in general! Happy to hear you like them.
Anyway, onto our discussion of The Adventure of the Devil's Foot. What did you think? Here are a few questions to get you started.
- Is Watson Holmes' doctor? Perhaps only on occasion? Watson calls Holmes his patient here, but Dr. Moore Agar is the one who prescribes rest for Holmes in the first place.
- Obviously, the big questions have to do with the experiment. Is Holmes off his game here? Perhaps from the illness? Because this whole enterprise is so profoundly poorly conceived.
Every person who has been exposed to this toxin is dead or hopelessly insane. But when he finds the likely culprit, Holmes deliberately exposes himself and Watson to it, with only an open window as a semblance of a safety measure. He admits in his preamble about it that there is a risk of death ("the premature decease of two deserving members of society"), but later claims he "never imagined that the effect could be so sudden and so severe." Really? All the victims have been found in their chairs, having never made it to stand or even try to crawl away. That points to a fast-acting, powerful poison.
Let's say he just ignored those points. After all, impulsivity and an ignorance of danger are Sherlock Holmes' trademarks. However, they are not Doctor Watson's. Yet Watson goes along with this scheme without a single question or word of caution. Which makes me wonder (and this will come up in future stories as well) how reliable John Watson is as a narrator. From what we know of Watson, he is steadfast and reliable, yes, but he is also sensible and competent. I understand he would want to help Holmes if at all he could, but surely the doctor must know brain damage is possible here at the very least. Would he really allow Holmes to put the both of them at serious risk just to prove a point? If not, why tell the story this way? Simply to keep the story moving and keep Holmes at the front and center of it?
- One last thing about the experiment. Watson describes his terrifying experience of the poison vividly. What must it have been like then for Holmes, who was inescapably lost inside it? He is extraordinarily imaginative and highly controlled. To lose that control and have his imagination used against him to create his own worst nightmares must be excruciating. And what horrors those worst nightmares must contain!
Anyway, onto our discussion of The Adventure of the Devil's Foot. What did you think? Here are a few questions to get you started.
- Is Watson Holmes' doctor? Perhaps only on occasion? Watson calls Holmes his patient here, but Dr. Moore Agar is the one who prescribes rest for Holmes in the first place.
- Obviously, the big questions have to do with the experiment. Is Holmes off his game here? Perhaps from the illness? Because this whole enterprise is so profoundly poorly conceived.
Every person who has been exposed to this toxin is dead or hopelessly insane. But when he finds the likely culprit, Holmes deliberately exposes himself and Watson to it, with only an open window as a semblance of a safety measure. He admits in his preamble about it that there is a risk of death ("the premature decease of two deserving members of society"), but later claims he "never imagined that the effect could be so sudden and so severe." Really? All the victims have been found in their chairs, having never made it to stand or even try to crawl away. That points to a fast-acting, powerful poison.
Let's say he just ignored those points. After all, impulsivity and an ignorance of danger are Sherlock Holmes' trademarks. However, they are not Doctor Watson's. Yet Watson goes along with this scheme without a single question or word of caution. Which makes me wonder (and this will come up in future stories as well) how reliable John Watson is as a narrator. From what we know of Watson, he is steadfast and reliable, yes, but he is also sensible and competent. I understand he would want to help Holmes if at all he could, but surely the doctor must know brain damage is possible here at the very least. Would he really allow Holmes to put the both of them at serious risk just to prove a point? If not, why tell the story this way? Simply to keep the story moving and keep Holmes at the front and center of it?
- One last thing about the experiment. Watson describes his terrifying experience of the poison vividly. What must it have been like then for Holmes, who was inescapably lost inside it? He is extraordinarily imaginative and highly controlled. To lose that control and have his imagination used against him to create his own worst nightmares must be excruciating. And what horrors those worst nightmares must contain!
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}