Watson as a Narrative Device in Conan Doyle's Stories About Sherlock Holmes

Watson as a Narrative Device in Conan Doyle's Stories About Sherlock Holmes

Conan Doyle wrote many stories about Sherlock Holmes, originally for a

newspaper called the Strand. In the stories he uses a character called

Dr Watson to tell the stories. Watson is Holmes's close friend and

companion in solving the mysteries. Watson is very useful for telling

the story because he is not quite as smart as Holmes. This helps Conan

Doyle because Watson never quite knows what Holmes is thinking.

Although Watson is a very smart man, Holmes's mind is completely

superior. Another thing about Watson and Holmes's relationship is that

although they are very close allies they are complete opposites. For

example Watson has lots of friends and was once married, but on the

other hand Holmes comes across to the reader as being a loner and

doesn't have many friends.

Conan Doyle uses Watson very well to emphasis how smart Holmes is. In

this chapter of the story in the Red headed league Watson cannot see

anything special about the man standing in front of them, but Holmes

has other ideas "Beyond the obvious facts that at some time he has

done manual labor, that he takes snuff, that he is a freemason, that

he has been in china and that he has done a considerable amount of

writing lately, apart from that I can deduce nothing else." This make

the reader realize just how smart Holmes is in comparison to Watson.

There is another example of how Watson is used to show how smart

Holmes is in the story of the Engineers thumb. Watson is very highly

recommended as a doctor "I thought I'd bring him round myself so he

couldn't slip away. There he is all safe and sound. I must go now

doctor." What this tells us is that Watson is a very smart man and is

very highly regarded, so in theory if Holmes is smarter than Watson he

must be a very smart man.

Another way that Watson is used very effectively is how Watson sets