Silver Blade: A Sherlock Holmes Detective Story - Essay Example

Silver Blade: A Sherlock Holmes Detective Story The Narration Watson tells the story and acts as a chronicler for Holmes. This helps in getting the story from a better perspective as opposed to if Holmes was to tell the story himself. Watson plays the role of making Sherlock look good, almost superhuman. Holmes’ abilities are the ones that make the story interesting, what pleasures the reader. In this regard, if the Holmes was to tell the story himself, it would lose its edge because people do not like it when a person blows his own trumpet. It is easier for people to admire Holmes when Watson narrates his almost superhuman abilities, as opposed to when Holmes narrates them. If he did, he would have to look like an obnoxious person and people generally do not like this kind of character. To maintain a balance between the praises that the hype that Watson gives him, Holmes himself has in a number of occasions either in the Silver Blaze or other stories pointed out that Watson sometimes paints him as a superhuman that he is not. For instance, in one of the stories, he tells Watson that if at any time he (Watson) feels that he (Holmes) is too overconfident about a case he is working on, he should just whisper into his ears and that he will heed his advice. On another occasion, he tells Watson that based on what he writes about him, a reader may get the idea that Holmes is an infallible being. Holmes accuses his friend Watson of romanticizing his accounts. He says that this is not correct for detection work because as he says “detection work is an exact process and does not have the romance of a love story. He calls it a cold process, one that should not need beautification with romance. These small disagreements between Holmes and Watson are what sustains a balance that makes the audience love the character (Holmes) and makes the sty interesting. Pleasure points in the story The pleasure in the story is in Holmes’ abilities and personality. The narrator continues to narrate about the abilities of Sherlock and his personality. One gets to know that Holmes is very good in handling women, regardless of the fact that he is not in any way interested in having any intimate or romantic relationship with them. Just like the time in which the story is set, the element of English Chivalry comes out strongly. Watson manages to paint Holmes as a Chivalrous man, regardless of his disinterest in women. This element is very useful in the story. Watson also points that many women are interested or feel attracted to Watson, but that Watson only shows interest in a women only when the woman is the central point of his case. He however looses interest once the case is over and the women are no longer in the centre of his activities. Holmes himself talks about women and says that they are complicated, and must not be trusted. Watson says that to Holmes, a woman is just a unit, another piece on the case that needs solving. The only woman that Sherlock seems to have been interested in even after solving the case in which she was was Irene Adler. This was however because of her wits and had nothing to do with romantic relations. Does it for the love of the chase The other element that would make the story interesting when put on a television screen is that like in most detective stories, Holmes does not do what he does because of the money, he does it because he likes what he does. This has become a common theme in television drama and especially crime and detective dramas (Todorov, 1966). In the American series by the name of Burn Notice, Michael Westen, a former CIA detective, and his two friends Fiona (a former criminal mastermind) and Sam (a former US Navy SEAL) are involved in helping people who are in trouble and cannot afford to pay for the services of private investigator to help them. They not only act as detectives, they also act as bounty hunters only that they do not ask for payment. They only do this to help people. They refuse to take payment even though they are broke and need money. Michael Westen is very broke and lives in a Garage after he was fired from the CIA after his enemies set him up. This element of him using his detective skills to help the poor and the oppressed is an interesting art of the story and makes him look like a hero. This theme in modern television crime and detective drama is not unique to Burn Notice alone (Reiner, 1994). It is useful in most modern TV detective dramas. Holmes also takes this themes and structure and this makes it interesting to the audience. People are attracted to people who can go out of their ways to help a needy person. In a modern world that is full of selfish people, people who are so selfish that they take advantage of the disadvantaged instead of helping them, such a character is not only admired but revered, albeit it being in the fictional realisms (Leishman & Mason, 2003). Holmes not only offers his services to the poor and underprivileged, he is also reluctant to offer his services to the rich and privileged (Mathews, 2011). He also refuses to charge more for the rich, and says that his prices are standard for all cases, and that he never changes them apart from when he chooses not to charge anything at all. Holmes also has an appetite to help the helpless, some of whom cannot even afford. With regard to financial issues, and what he does, Holmes says he already earned enough for his retirement in his previous job and does not need money from the current detective job. This makes the story interesting due to the heroism aspect of the job (Wallace, 2012). Of course, other elements make the story interesting to the audience. The whodunit, thriller, suspense format of the story makes it interesting. Holmes is a detective who is very smart and very sharp. Emotions are out of his way and he is able to use a kind of thinking that most people, even some of the smartest, would find very difficult to use. He uses reductive thinking, which makes him to see the world around him in a very different way. Using this kind of thinking, he is able for instance to know the owner of a certain object by just observing the object. This gives him almost superhuman abilities that help him in his detection work. The story includes the thriller, suspense, and detective theme and this combination makes it interesting to most people. The nature of the mystery Suspense, crime twisted crime The nature of the case that Holmes explains can qualify as both suspense and crime As a crime, there is murder case that needs investigation. Someone had killed the trainer of a famous horse known for winning races such as the Wessex Cup. Someone also stole the horse. Anyone could have suspected that someone stole the horse so it would not win the race that was to happen the next day. The person may have decided to kill the trainer just in case he saw him. What brings the element of twist is that there is surmounting evidence that Fitzroy Simpson could be the killer. He has motive, because he is interested in horse racing and betting and this means that he might have had clear motives to not only steal the horse, albeit not for using it in any race but to make sure it does not participate in the race. More so, his Cravat, a sort of necktie, was in the hand of the murder victim. This places Fitzroy Simpson right at the centre of the murder. However, it turns out that the death of Straker had nothing to do with crime, at least not murder. Holmes is able to explain the mystery. His first clue is that the dog never barked the night of the crime, which then gave Holmes the clue that the perpetrator must have been someone with whom the dog was familiar. Secondly, the guard had been poisoned with an opium, and for this to happen, a very spicy ad expensive meal had been give to him, which also every other person in the Straker household had eaten but only the guard was affected. He notes that only a member of the Straker family would have arranged for such a meal, in order to make sure that the rich spices would mask the taste of the drug. Other pointers such as a 22-guinea dress pointed to the fact that Straker was having an affair with an expensive lady whom he intended to impress. This was a motive for Holmes to want to make a big win it the races the following day. From there, he is able to use reductive reasoning to find that Straker was the perpetrator. He took the horse out of the stables to try and slightly injure it in the leg, the horse killed him with a kick to the head, and the horse was found by a good neighbor who kelp it until it was found by Holmes. In the way the mystery ends, what Holmes is solving is not a crime, because the central case in this story is about the murder of the horse trainer and the theft of the racehorse. Since it turns out that there was no murder and there was no theft of the horse, it is not appropriate to say it is a crime. However, there was a crime, only that the crime was by the person thought to be the victim. The crime was not murder but was the intention to try to cheat in a racing game. The perpetrator needed no prosecution; he had already paid dearly for the crime, with his life. The story is also a story of suspense in that right from the beginning, the reader is made to understand that there is an unusual twist to the crime about to be solved, however, these details only come later, and this leaves the reader suspended until the end where the pieces are put together. Why solve the mystery The many mysteries that Holmes solves are important because without solving them, the wrong person would end up paying for the criminal activities of another person. This is why Holmes is more interested in solving cases involving the poor and the helpless. He notices that these people are most likely to face by injustice. By offering his detective skills, he can exonerate a poor person who would otherwise bear the blunt of an ineffective justice system (MacMurraugh-Kavanagh, Madeline, 2000). The Holmes character takes after an English Knight, only that he is not on a horse and does not bear a sword. He knows that his service is a service that many helpless people need badly. Holmes has a sense of justice that many people do not have (Malcom, 2012). This aspect of his attitude towards what he does not only makes the story interesting and pleasurable but also makes it one that strikes right at the heart of the audience. People like a person who loots for the underdog, the person who has no chance of fighting back. This gallantly in detective works of Holmes would make it more interesting if it is put on the screen (Gobson, 2013). Modern heroism is a way for most people to be able to tolerate a world that deals them unfair blows. To bring a person like Holmes on the television would to be to bring a hero tight in the living rooms of the many households (Jones, 2010). This is just what they want. The modern audience wants to come back home after a long day out there and what they need the most is a story like Holmes’, a story that will inspire them and encourage them that regardless of the heartless world out there, there are still good people who can take their time to help a helpless person. In this regard, it is very necessary that the mysteries that be in the Holmes’ stories find a solution in order for the underdog to win. This way, it gives the audience some hope and some dignity, as well as the reassurance that it is possible for even the lowest to win. The whole issue is that everybody feels like he is being treated like an underdog somewhere, whether it is at work, in the neighborhood etc. a story like Holes brings hope to everyone, especially when he is able to solve his cases and a person who would have suffered for nothing he did is exonerated (Garland & Bilby, 2011). Difficulties in adapting it for the screen The Victorian milieu One of the issues that would make the Holmes stories hard to put in the screen is the Victorian setting within which it is set. This is especially with regard to the Wessex Cup Competition, which is a Victorian cultural setting. Of course, this can be reproduced on the screen using consumes, but it can be expensive set to produce due to the costumers and the Computer Graphics that would be needed to portray the set into the Victorian buildings and environment. Movies from Hollywood and UK as well have been able to reproduce all sorts of past cultural environments including the Roman culture in the times of the Roman Empire. However, this is usually and expensive process and is only used when the story is worth it (Sullivan, 2012). The 19th century train In Silver Blaze, on the way to the crime scene, Holmes and his friend and chronicler uses a Victorian style train. This can also be another challenge in producing the set. Again, production of the set can be through using the CGI but also a long and expensive process. There is of course the problem of the Victorian language used to tell the story. In adapting the story forth e screen, it would be very difficult to use this language and still make the story interesting to modern audience. However, this is not entirely impossible because it has been done in so many screening of archaic stories such as the stories of the Roman Empire, the stories of the Wild West in America. In such television such as Rome, Spartacus, and Spartans, the producers chose to use the archaic language in order to bring authenticity. However, sticking to the Victorian language for a detective story such as Holmes’ can be challenging. It would make it less interesting. In telling historical accounts, sustaining this old-fashioned language is necessary because the intention is to make the audience feel that they have been transported those many hundreds of years back. This is not the same case for a detective story (Parsons, 2011). In fact, a great part of the audience would find it hard to understand the language. For instance, in one of the stories where one rich person offers to pay double the fees that Holmes charges, Holmes says that his prices are standard and that he never alters them, unless when he chose to “REMIT them altogether.” In this case, the word remit means omit, or forgo. This word however would mean something completely different to a modern listener. Overcoming that linguistic barrier in putting a story like this on the screen can be a major challenge and requires a professional who is good in adapting such a story to the screen (Maxwell, 2013). The language must change without changing the object of the story (Westen, 2011). The way to overcome this challenge is to maintain the story line, which sis a detective story, but not focus too much on reproducing the culture in which the story has been set. The good thing is that the story in is one that is still relevant to the modern world. Horseracing is still a practice that is common in modern world and the rules have not changed much. This method of overcoming this is available in adaptation of this Sherlock Holmes stories in BBC series called Holmes. The series does not focus on the Victorian cultural background against which the original stories are set, but focuses on telling the story. The stories have been adapted for the modern audience and as is evident, there are elements that appear in the series that could not have been the case in the time in which the stories were set. For instance, in the first episode of the second season of the series, the episode features some modern themes that include a Pakistani (the victim of a murder). It is not conceivable that during the time of story that therefore were many, if any, Pakistanis living in England. The other challenge would be bringing the action to the screen considering that the actions are in flashback. Just like the mode of telling stories at the time the stories Doyle wrote them, they used a lot of flashback and flash-forwards and this can be a challenge when putting it on the television screen (mcGregory, 2012). This is because the way a story flows on paper is not the same way it flows on a television screen. Of course, it is also possible to use the flashbacks on a televised story, but this requires expertise and the ability to know how the audience follows the story. This is one more challenge that screening such a story would definitely face. The use if flashbacks on the screen require technique and expertise and this would require to execution in a very advanced way in order to retain the interest by the audience. If the audience cannot be able to follow the story effectively, they will be disinterested in the story and the whole thing will be a failure. Flashbacks can go into the screen, but requires expertise as they can lead to boredom and confusion to the audience. If the director does not manage these flashbacks well when outing such a story on the screen, the confusion that is likely to emanate from this can be very negative on the effectiveness of the story, especially with regard to its entertaining elements. Reference list: Gobson, S. (2013). Gallant TV Detective, A Story of Modern Televsion. London, UK: Pearson Books. Jones, P. (2010). BringinHeroes ot the Home: Modern Television and their Imact on Audinece. New York, NY: Pearson Books. Malcom, H. (2012). Television nd Hero Stories: Catching the Audience. London, UK: Barlet Books. Mathews, P. (2011). Sherlock Holmes and Fition Gallantly. London, UK: Lippincot. Maxwell, A. (2013). Language Barrier in telling Archic Stroes on Modern Media. London, UK: Pearson Books. mcGregory, R. (2012). television Story Telling; Methods and Themes. New York, NY: Pearson Books. Parsons, D. 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