GCSE: Conan Doyle's Sign of Four

Sherlock

- His arm is ‘dotted and scarred with innumerable puncture marks’ the Victorians used to take drugs such as opium as medicine

- ‘great powers, his masterly manner’

‘Hawklike features’ he is a predator, he catches prey

- ‘I abhor the dull routine of existence’

- Sherlock has power, he is admired. The French detective ‘speaks as a pupil to his master’

- Pays great attention to detail ‘Upon the Distinction between the Ashes of the Various Tobaccoes’

- Confident body language ‘leaning back luxuriously in his arm-chair’

- ‘Holmes took his revolver from his drawer’ not afraid for action

- ‘his beady eyes gleaming and deep-set like those of a bird’ excellent focus, beyond human capabilities

Watson

- He is irritated by Sherlock, but wary of standing up to him ‘I was irritated by the egotism’

- His leg is injured, he is physically weaker than Sherlock ‘it ached wearily at every change of the weather’ parallel with Jonathan Small with the wooden leg

- Though Watson narrates the novel, Sherlock has the majority of the speech

- When Sherlock deduces information from Watsons watch about his father, Watson has ‘considerable bitterness in my heart’, but then changes his attitude, ‘I should have more faith in your marvellous faculty’ Is this sarcastic?

- Sees his future as ‘black’ but thinks that Mrs Morstan would be able to ‘brighten it’

Protective of Morstan when Sholto says her dad is dead ‘I could have struck the man across the face’

Ms Morstan

- Determined ‘Ms Morstan entered the room with a firm step’ even though her physical appearance contrasts this ‘she was a blonde young lady, small, dainty’

- Wears a ‘white feather’

- ‘she first turned faint, and then burst into a passion of weeping’ stereotypical Victorian woman, weak vulnerable

‘Whoever had lost a treasure, I knew that night that I had gained one.’ Said by Watson. Though complementary, suggesting that she is beautiful and of value, the metaphor of treasure suggest that she is an object and can be owned

Jonathan Small

- Scatters the treasure into the river ‘it is my treasure; and if I can't have the loot I'll take darned good care that no one else does’

- in prison he was ‘bullied by every cursed black-faced policeman who loved to take it out of a white man’ suggesting that the black policemen are to blame?

- swimming in the Ganges, leg bitten off by a crocodile

- One of the 3 men, made a deal with Captain Morstan and Sholto to get treasure, but Sholto stole the treasure ‘The scoundrel had stolen it all’

- ‘From that day I lived only for vengeance’

- ‘We earned a living at this time by my exhibiting poor Tonga at fairs and other such places as the black cannibal’ he plays with racist stereotypes and uses Tonga for money and self-gain

Thaddeus Sholto

- ‘visible line of yellow, irregular teeth’

- ‘Eastern luxury’ ‘tiger skins thrown’

- ‘he shivered from head to foot’

- greed, reacts more dramatically to the loss of the treasure ‘The treasure is gone!’

Empire

- Holmes described a French detective to have ‘all the Celtic power of quick intuition’

- ‘curiosities from the Andaman Islands’

- ‘There was strangely incongruous (odd) in this Oriental figure framed in the commonplace door-way of a third-rate suburban dwelling-house’

- The chest is cursed? Morstan’s dad had heart attack and ‘fell backwards, cutting his head against the corner of the treasure-chest’

- "Is that an English thorn?" he asked. "No, it certainly is not."

- ‘It was soothing to catch even that passing glimpse of a tranquil English home in - - ‘the midst of the wild, dark business which had absorbed us’

- ‘These massacres are invariably concluded by a cannibal feast’

- ‘his thick lips were writhed back from his teeth, which grinned and chattered at us with a half animal fury’ absolute prejudice

- J Small doesn’t kill Bartholomew even though Small is the antagonist – ‘it was that little hell-hound Tonga who shot one of his cursed darts into him’

- Indians are ‘small and weak’

Victorian Period

- ‘See how the yellow fog swirls down the street’ pathetic fallacy, fog makes it hard to see clearly

- ‘the murky uncertain twilight was setting into a clear starlit night’ changes towards the end of the book, everything becomes clear

- ‘mud coloured clouds drooped sadly over the muddy streets’

- ‘the most winning woman I ever knew was hanged for poisoning three little children for their insurance money’ Victorian fears with crime

- ‘Women are never to be entirely trusted,—not the best of them’ Sherlock says this

Mystery and Crime

- Every year Mrs Morstan received ‘similar box containing a similar pearl’

- ‘If my own servant could not believe my innocence, how could I hope to make it good before twelve foolish tradesmen in a jury-box’

- Title of the book as a clue ‘there were four feet unaccounted for’ where the treasure was hidden

- Foreshadowing Bartholomew’s death ‘The vast size of the building, with its gloom and its deathly silence, struck a chill to the heart’

‘he pointed to what looked like a long, dark thorn stuck in the skin just above his ear’

- ‘when you have eliminated the impossible whatever remains, HOWEVER IMPROBABLE, must be the truth’

- ‘I am weaving my web round Thaddeus’ Athelney Jones, Police get things wrong, web of lies

- Toby the dog is a ‘mongrel’ which foreshadows that he might not be a great sniffer dog – he follows the wrong trail initially

- The boat that they escape on is ‘black with two red streaks’ signifying danger

PLOT TWIST when they open up the chest the treasure is lost, builds tension