Characteristics of Sherlock Holmes: the most famous literary detective

The most famous detective in the literary world came from the pen of Arthur Conan Doyle and still remains the recognized favorite of the public. The recognizable character has acquired its own characteristics, certain attributes that allow him not to get lost among other heroes and to be familiar even to those who did not even meet with the work of Conan Doyle. To this day, there remain actual screen versions of the numerous adventures of this detective in the form of films and serials. Characterization of Sherlock Holmes will help to present this character as it was conceived by its creator.

Brief information

Sherlock Holmes is the hero of detective stories and stories of Arthur Conan Doyle. His image of an observant genius, capable of unraveling any business and unraveling even the most complex puzzle, is supplemented by the image of a faithful friend - Dr. Watson, a man more simple and ordinary. Arthur Conan Doyle devoted the great detective thirty-one years of his life (from 1886 to 1917), popularizing the genre of a detective novel and engendering a lot of followers and admirers. The characterization of Sherlock Holmes can not be unambiguous, since it is impossible to name even this character himself.

"Sherlock Holmes is a great man, and maybe, one day, with great luck, he will also become understandable"

The image of Sherlock Holmes was formed at the turn of the epoch, at a time when the world in which Arthur Conan Doyle lived and his characters could be designated only one epithet - contradictory.

The detective can be identified immediately as a decadent, Victorian and neoromantic hero. Why does the characterization of Sherlock Holmes reach such extremes? Because each direction had a strong enough influence on the formation of an image so memorable for readers.

Victorian Sherlock Holmes

The literary hero-gentleman is the prototype of the character of the present Victorian novel. But what is included in this definition?

Previously it was believed that a gentleman is a man of noble birth, provided enough to live without working. Therefore, the employment of such persons was of an amateur nature, and their qualities included the ability to improvise, the presence of a free mind and love for experiments.

Over time, the criteria increasingly blurred, and as a result, to determine the gentleman became more important features of his character, personality characteristics, and not financial situation. A gentleman is an example of nobility, a code of honor, gallantry and intelligence, equanimity under any circumstances.

So who is Sherlock Holmes? Characteristics of the hero contains all these qualities, so he may well be called a gentleman. In addition, he is sufficiently secured, and the investigation of crimes deals exclusively for his own pleasure, in order to dispel boredom.

But still he does not fully fit this image.

Decadence - the aesthetics of the end of the century

Decadence is an extreme, this opposition still builds. It was expressed in contempt of the ordinary, it was stormy, rather than prim, individual and creative, instead of normal and accepted. And who will argue that all this does not fit our hero? The characteristic of Sherlock Holmes is just such - it's not usual to call it. And if something caused interest in him, then everything else became unimportant: the time of day did not play a role in the plot of the detective's activity, only the desire to eradicate boredom, to unravel the next riddle remained important.

Neo-romantic Sherlock Holmes

Characteristics of the literary hero as a person self-sufficient and amateur, independent in deeds and judgments - such a character came to the fore in neoromanticism. The same features are characteristic of Mr. Holmes. Just like neo-romantic heroes, he fights for justice in his microcosm, not seeking to solve global ecumenical problems.

Family values and addiction

One of the reasons Sherlock Holmes can not be ranked among Victorian literature is that there is no propaganda of family values in the hero. Relations with the detective's relatives are strained, only the older brother Mycroft, who is more likely a stranger or an enemy than a friend, is mentioned for the whole cycle, and there is a reference to his nephew (only once).

In addition, Holmes has a passion that is closer to decadence than to the primly gentlemen of Victorianism - drugs, morphine and cocaine. In those days, when these substances were still walking along the sharp edge between medicinal preparations and harmful to the body, the detective's liking did not seem uniquely detrimental, but impose a bad imprint, clearly separating the story from family books.

Features of the novels of Conan Doyle and the deductive method of Holmes

Characterization of Sherlock Holmes focuses on his unique and inquisitive mind. The same is true for all the stories about the detective: Arthur Conan Doyle does not relish the aesthetics of the murder, he does not consider it aesthetic, much of the attention is paid to thinking, the progress of the matter, intellectuality and psychology.

You can also notice that an amateur detective more often acts not according to the laws of England, but according to the laws of honor, to his own principles - he can release the criminal if he believes that he was right in his actions. And this is not an isolated case. The villains in the adventures of Holmes can not always be called such - they are always stories about love and betrayal, friends and enemies, and they are committed rarely for the sake of only one evil.