Book Review On The Final Probl

1.Introduction

The Final Problem ,or The Adventure of the Final Problem,is one of the classic Conan Doyle's work of Sherlock Holmes. Since the publication of A Study in Scarlet in 1886, Doyle earned great fame with the Sherlock Holmes series of stories,which ,however,also limited his further creation. In November 1891 he wrote to his mother: "I think of slaying Holmes, ... and winding him up for good and all He takes my mind from better things.." His mother responded, "You won't! You can't! You mustn't!"but In December 1893, to dedicate more of his time to his historical novels, Doyle still had Holmes down the Reichenbach Falls in The Final Problem.[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Conan_Doyle]Then we know that the readers rejected such an ending and forced Doyle to let Holmes survive in the later story and continued his adventure with Dr. Watson. However, in order to make the intelligent Holmes’s death reasonably, the author created a villain,Professor Moriarty,as a formidable opponent. How to properly describe Moriarty so as to make Holmes’s death not so unexpected?The author's solution can show his excellent writing talent.

2.Summary

In the beginning of the story, Watson had not solved the case together with his old friend Sherlock Holmes since he had been married and started in private practice. Watson thought that there would be a long time to see him again as Holmes wrote that he went to France to do an important case, when Holmes suddenly appeared in Watson's apartment. With his finger injured,the courageous detective looks very fear for the first time,and he was afraid of tracking and air gun attacks. To give an answer to Watson’s puzzlement, Holmes told him the culprit of all this: Professor Moriarty.

Holmes called Moriarty the Napoleon of crime, and said that he had at last met an antagonist who was his intellectual equal. However, Holmes still managed to catch a little trip of Moriarty; with this trip, ,the Scotland Yard would be able to arrest the whole Moriarty gang three days later. When Holmes hold great confidence, Moriarty visited Holmes's room without invitation. Moriarty not only showed his marvelous power of observation ,which was comparable to Holmes, but seriously warned Holmes; Holmes, although a little surprised, remained unmoved.After Moriarty’s leaving,Holmes met retaliation soon: he suffered three attacks in the rest of that day before he finally went to his old friend Watson.

Then,the two genius launched a battle on tracking and anti-tracking : firstly,by disguising himself he successfully fool Moriarty and met Watson, and then abandoned their luggage to let Moriarty wrongly tracked the train. Holmes safely reached the Europe continent while three days later, the Scotland Yard really successfully caught all members of the criminal groups, except for Moriarty himself.Holmes knew clearly that Moriarty would not let it go so easily, so he was always beware of Moriarty's revenge; sure enough, when they travel to the Reichenbach Falls in Netherlands, Moriarty finally succeeded in getting Watson away. He launched an one on one battle with Holmes.When Watson was aware and rushed to find his old friend,he only got a note from Holmes.It seemed that both of them fell off a cliff. Though Holmes died,he did win the battle versus Moriarty as all members of the gang met his deserved judgment.The legendary Sherlock Holmes's story drew to its end at last.

3.Analysis

I mainly want to say something about the author’s writing skills.Doyle’s talent is to describe the character in a wonderful but not too direct way.For instance,At the beginning of A Study in Scarlet,he did not describe Holmes directly,but from the viewpoint of Watson,which makes the hero come to live even more.So,in The Final Problem,he did not describe Moriarty neither,but from the perspective of Holmes.As the reader has learned the genius of Holmes,seeing Holmes paying so much effort to fight against Moriarty can best stand out Moriarty’s resourcefulness.During the whole story,Moriarty only appears two times:one in Holmes’s recall,one in the Victoria Station(only appears after Holmes turns up).I think such way of description is the highlight of the story.In a way we can say that the main idea of the passage is to kill Holmes reasonably,and the successful shaping of Moriarty is the vital means to achieve such purpose.

Because of the pressure from the readers,Doyle had to let Holmes resurrect in  his later work The Adventure of the Empty House.In this book,Holmes won the fight and kill Moriarty,then he successfully hid himself in order to prevent himself from the attack of Moriarty’s partners.It is the detail that nobody had witnessed the death of Holmes that make Holmes’s survive possible.So we can see the cleverness of the author as he always keeps a leeway and that is why the series of Holmes can keep its vitality;we also learn that although Doyle complaint that Holmes disables his further writing,he still had great feelings for Holmes as he did not kill him directly.

2016-01-06

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