Discussion Post: The Sign of the Four

[spacemutineer.livejournal.com]

Welcome back to another Sunday at sherlock60 and this week's novel-length read: The Sign of the Four. Did you enjoy it? What did you think? As always, here are a few questions and thoughts of mine to get you started. Please add your own!

- I really enjoy these full novels. Getting in depth with the characters and the plot is very enjoyable. I gravitate usually toward short stories, but HOUN and SIGN have been great fun. Action! Supsense! Drama! Romance! Anything you're looking for, you can find in these novels.

- There are three relationships in conflict in SIGN: Mary and Watson, Watson and Holmes, and Holmes and cocaine. Each is passionate in its own way.

Mary is a fine wife for Watson, certainly. She is bright, clever, and brave like he is. But does their affection seem rushed to you? They are both in tumultuous emotional circumstances, with Watson stuck injured at home with a bored cocaine addict, and Mary in deep with the great mystery at the center of her life. Perhaps that heightens the feelings they develop for one another. However quick their courtship, they are a sweet couple together. Do you really think it would have been a problem for them to be together even if she had been a wealthy heiress? Social conventions would be a problem,

The bored cocaine addict, meanwhile, realizes too late he's pushing his only companion away. And push him away Holmes does, eagerly shooting himself up in front of the still-healing doctor, wasting his body and his gifts, and casually insulting Watson about his writing. Later, Holmes does what he can to stop the inevitable once he sees Watson and Mary gravitate toward each other. He plays his heart out to lull his exhausted friend to sleep only to lose him immediately to his dream lover. He takes him on another thrilling adventure, but Watson ends it by announcing it is his last. Holmes finishes the story where he begins, seeking his chosen companion, the needle.

Holmes' dedication to drugs is powerful and detailed here. Three times a day. Injection scars lining his arms. Holmes chooses his fleeting chemical pleasure over his friendship with Watson consistently until Watson gives up and leaves to join someone kind and happy to be with him, at which point Holmes chooses cocaine as his only solace remaining. But doesn't he deserve his fate? How much pity does he warrant for his choices and behavior?

- We've got some bizarre characters in this one, from Thaddeus Sholto the loquacious hypochondriac London sahib to crazy Mr. Sherman, the animal keeper to Tonga the loyal/vicious cannibal pygmy. I kind of love the strangeness.

- Small's story of rebellion in India: "the cruellest part of it was that these men that we fought against, foot, horse, and gunners, were our own picked troops, whom we had taught and trained, handling our own weapons and blowing our own bugle-calls." Wars of empire, the same now as they have ever been. *sigh*

Comments

[wytchcroft.livejournal.com]

there is perhaps a fourth relationship - since all the characters (from Holmes to Watson to the Sholtos, Mary, Small and Watson) are searching for something - some sort of satisfaction they cannot find in themselves and see instead materialised in the world in some form; the Agra treasure, or the (7%) solution to the case, or some sort of tangible justice or - a wife - or... you get my drift.
Holmes hangs on to his needle quite as much as the Major walled himself off with the treasure and Small has his own method of needlepoint fun... for is there not some weird reflective connection between Holmes' syringe and Small's blow-dart injecting minion?

[hisietari.livejournal.com]

From a personal point of view, SIGN depressed me quite a lot. Those last lines? Torment.

[thesmallhobbit.livejournal.com]

I think that Watson and Mary Morstan are a lovely couple. And had ACD stopped after writing SIGN then there would never be a problem. (And there wouldn't have been 60 for 60, which would have been a great shame.)

[wytchcroft.livejournal.com]

your story was very touching on that point :))

how much of Watson and his shadowy wives reflects Conan Doyle's private life i do occasionally wonder...