5 Quotes about the character of Sherlock Holmes in 'The Sign of the Four'

5 Quotes about the character of Sherlock Holmes in 'The Sign of the Four'

The questions in the AQA GCSE Literature exam are focused both upon an extract and a the whole text, and it's important to remember that the mark scheme does not tell you how much to write about the extract and how much to write about the whole text.

As I'm sure you know the questions themselves may be character or theme based or a little bit of both. You can see an example question here. But whether the question is based on theme or character, it's pretty likely that you'll be asked about Holmes' character or about the nature of the detective.

The smart student will have a bunch of Holmes quotes ready to go, and they will go into the exam with a pretty good idea about what they will say about them.

Early Detective

If you asked a literature professor, 'what was the first crime novel?' the odds are that they would say 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue' by Edgar Allan Poe. In this story, published in 1841, just fifty years before 'The Sign of the Four', a brilliant detective (like Holmes), called Auguste Dupin, solves a seemingly impossible crime (like Holmes) that has flummoxed the police (like Holmes again). Not only that but like the Holmes stories, 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue' is narrated by Dupin's assistant (just as Watson narrates 'The Sign of the Four').

So, how is Holmes different?

Well, while both Holmes and Dupin share an unshakeable faith in the power of logic and reason to solve any problem, 'The Sign of the Four' was published in 1890 and as we would expect, Holmes himself has definite differences from Dupin that show how the fictional detective was changing.

First Holmes is more rebellious than his predecessor. Where Dupin extols cold reason, we see Holmes engaging in practices that are logically hard to justify. He takes cocaine and (in other stories) uses the wall of his apartment for target practice. Secondly, 'The Sign of the Four' contains important elements of action and of humour and of romance. There is a boat chase, gunshots, disguises and a comic scene with a dog and a bucket of creosote.

It is no accident that Conan Doyle names his first collection of Sherlock Holmes stories, 'The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes', for Holmes is in part an action hero, as much the precursor to James Bond as to Poirot and Miss Marple.

5 Quotations to use when writing about Holmes

"My mind," he said, "rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work..." 

Here we see Holmes discussing his drug-taking with Watson at the start of the novel. He reveals that inactivity ("stagnation") is Holmes' enemy. He uses the repeated imperative "give me...|" to show how he craves "problems" and mental "work". Holmes addiction to "problems" can be seen to mark him as vulnerable in some way, perhaps more human than he would have us believe.

“You really are an automaton – a calculating machine. There is something positively inhuman in you at times.” 

In this quote, Watson talks to Holmes about his powers of deduction. The metaphors show that Watson sees Holmes as emotionless, like a robot. The adjective inhuman marks Holmes as an outsider, a sort of super-human, with (like Poe's Dupin) a deductive superpower.

“I would not tell them too much," said Holmes. "Women are never to be entirely trusted,—not the best of them.” 

Watson is planning to visit Mary Morstan, who is staying with Mrs. Forester. It's important to recognise that this is Holmes' view; Watson rejects it. It cannot be seen as Doyle's view either. It's hard to say whether the view Holmes expresses here is a mark of his arrogance, or sexism, or that his dismissal of women is intended to show that he is too much of a logical being to to be affected by sexuality. Of all the quotes here, it is this one that is the most problematic, but also the most interesting.

”But love is an emotional thing, and whatever is emotional is opposed to that true cold reason which I place above all things.

After Watson tells Holmes about his love for Mary, Holmes reacts with this statement about love. Holmes outlines the opposition he perceives between the abstract nouns "emotion" and "reason". The adjectives "true" and "cold" that Holmes attaches to the idea of "reason", implies that truth is also opposed to emotion.

"For me," said Sherlock Holmes, "there still remains the cocaine bottle.”

This is the last thing Holmes says in the novel. Without a crime to solve, Holmes is forced once again to return to drug-taking. Doyle creates a circularity to the novel here, and we see that Holmes is unaffected by the events of the novel. He is exactly the same at the end of the novel as he is at the start. He has learned no lessons and his attitudes have not changed.

So what's the big idea?

Top marks in the exam go to students who have an argument to make. So what are we saying about Holmes?

Well he's a derivative character who has a lot in common with his predecessors like Auguste Dupin, but he's also innovative. A rebel and a maverick, but someone who is literally addicted to crime, a flawed figure who without crime, turns to mild criminality himself.

Perhaps what makes Holmes such an enduring character is that through his relationship with Watson and the weakness of his addictions we see that Holmes (unlike Dupin) is more human than he would like us to believe.