Read Online Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong by Pierre Bayard - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Pierre Bayard
Ads: Link
definition of Watson as a “conductor of light.” His ability to stimulate
Holmes’s thinking is proportional to his fundamental miscomprehension of reality.
It is difficult to fault Holmes, though, when we watch Watson conduct his investigations throughout the novel. It is not just
Dr. Mortimer’s walking stick that Watson fails to properly analyze; he misunderstands everything that occurs (at least from Holmes’s point of view).
It is true that Watson, with Sir Henry’s help, shows himself capable of clearing up the mystery surrounding the curious behavior
of the Barrymores, and manages to connect them with the convict Selden. But this is one of only a few successes Watson records
in the entire book, and it is actually due to Mrs. Barrymore’s confession. Most of the time he misses the truth.
For example, he proves incapable of guessing the identity of the mysterious person glimpsed on the moor—Holmes himself. And
even with Frankland’s help in spotting and trailing him, he still allows himself to be identified by Holmes from his telltale
cigarette stub before he can recognize Holmes.
Watson shows himself equally inept at unraveling the relationships that link the characters living on the moor. He does not
realize that the Stapletons are actually married, that there is a love affair between Laura Lyons and the naturalist, or that
the latter is in fact a Baskerville.
But Watson is not content merely to misunderstand everything that is happening around him; he also displays reprehensible
negligence, which almost costs Sir Henry Baskerville his life. It is because Watson failed to keep watch over him that Sir
Henry runs the risk—at least in Holmes’s reconstruction of the event—of being attacked by the hound, which, led astray by
the scent on the clothing, finally pursues Selden.
Watson’s constant errors of interpretation have the effect of continually confronting readers with passages they will later
discover are based entirely on misperceptions. * So long as Watson continues to be wrong, so long as he feeds the reader fallacies, it is difficult to believe the final account
in which he implicitly affirms his friend’s conclusions.
The question of the reliability of the narrator is all the more important in The Hound of the Baskervilles since Watson often entrusts the narration to other characters, allowing their voices to tell the story. But their statements
are often not directly verifiable, even if their credibility can be supported in other ways.
A characteristic example of this delegation of narration is the one offered at the beginning of the book to Dr. Mortimer.
He is of course not the only person to have seen the corpse of Sir Charles Baskerville, but he is the only one to have discovered
a dog’s footprints nearby, which he curiously deemed it wise not to mention to the police investigators:
There was a thrill in the doctor’s voice which showed that he was himself deeply moved by that which he told us. Holmes leaned
forward in his excitement, and his eyes had the hard, dry glitter which shot from them when he was keenly interested.
“You saw this?”
“As clearly as I see you.”
“And you said nothing?”
“What was the use?”
“How was it that no one else saw it?”
“The marks were some twenty yards from the body and no one gave them a thought. I don’t suppose I should have done so had
I not known this legend.” 33
Mortimer then loses the narrator’s role, which he has occupied only for a few pages. But his story is decisive for the whole
case, since it is he who introduces the hypothesis of the dog and, at the same time, of murder. Holmes’s entire investigation
and the results he arrives at depend on the veracity of this initial testimony. If Mortimer, for whatever reason, has given
an inexact version—for instance by mistaking the prints of some other animal for a dog’s—then the detective’s
Holmes’s thinking is proportional to his fundamental miscomprehension of reality.
It is difficult to fault Holmes, though, when we watch Watson conduct his investigations throughout the novel. It is not just
Dr. Mortimer’s walking stick that Watson fails to properly analyze; he misunderstands everything that occurs (at least from Holmes’s point of view).
It is true that Watson, with Sir Henry’s help, shows himself capable of clearing up the mystery surrounding the curious behavior
of the Barrymores, and manages to connect them with the convict Selden. But this is one of only a few successes Watson records
in the entire book, and it is actually due to Mrs. Barrymore’s confession. Most of the time he misses the truth.
For example, he proves incapable of guessing the identity of the mysterious person glimpsed on the moor—Holmes himself. And
even with Frankland’s help in spotting and trailing him, he still allows himself to be identified by Holmes from his telltale
cigarette stub before he can recognize Holmes.
Watson shows himself equally inept at unraveling the relationships that link the characters living on the moor. He does not
realize that the Stapletons are actually married, that there is a love affair between Laura Lyons and the naturalist, or that
the latter is in fact a Baskerville.
But Watson is not content merely to misunderstand everything that is happening around him; he also displays reprehensible
negligence, which almost costs Sir Henry Baskerville his life. It is because Watson failed to keep watch over him that Sir
Henry runs the risk—at least in Holmes’s reconstruction of the event—of being attacked by the hound, which, led astray by
the scent on the clothing, finally pursues Selden.
Watson’s constant errors of interpretation have the effect of continually confronting readers with passages they will later
discover are based entirely on misperceptions. * So long as Watson continues to be wrong, so long as he feeds the reader fallacies, it is difficult to believe the final account
in which he implicitly affirms his friend’s conclusions.
The question of the reliability of the narrator is all the more important in The Hound of the Baskervilles since Watson often entrusts the narration to other characters, allowing their voices to tell the story. But their statements
are often not directly verifiable, even if their credibility can be supported in other ways.
A characteristic example of this delegation of narration is the one offered at the beginning of the book to Dr. Mortimer.
He is of course not the only person to have seen the corpse of Sir Charles Baskerville, but he is the only one to have discovered
a dog’s footprints nearby, which he curiously deemed it wise not to mention to the police investigators:
There was a thrill in the doctor’s voice which showed that he was himself deeply moved by that which he told us. Holmes leaned
forward in his excitement, and his eyes had the hard, dry glitter which shot from them when he was keenly interested.
“You saw this?”
“As clearly as I see you.”
“And you said nothing?”
“What was the use?”
“How was it that no one else saw it?”
“The marks were some twenty yards from the body and no one gave them a thought. I don’t suppose I should have done so had
I not known this legend.” 33
Mortimer then loses the narrator’s role, which he has occupied only for a few pages. But his story is decisive for the whole
case, since it is he who introduces the hypothesis of the dog and, at the same time, of murder. Holmes’s entire investigation
and the results he arrives at depend on the veracity of this initial testimony. If Mortimer, for whatever reason, has given
an inexact version—for instance by mistaking the prints of some other animal for a dog’s—then the detective’s
Similar Books
