Introduction
“A Scandal in Bohemia” by Conan Doyle is a masterpiece of a short story that blends playwriting skills with the flow associated with story telling. The reader completely connects with the rather peculiar character of Sherlock Holmes and his intuitive skills. Sherlock is also built as having adept communication skills and thus the reader follows the story from one conversation to the other until it ends. As compared to the other two, Mukarami’s “UFO in Kushiro” and Munro’s “How I Met My Husband”, the story has unequalled captivation.
Plot Summary
In “A Scandal in Bohemia”, the protagonist, Sherlock Holmes, is displayed as an individual with a high level of intuition built by his observant character. Being a passionate criminal investigator, Holmes solved criminal mysteries that defeat the official police. Watson, his former friend and companion, and a medical doctor, paid him a visit one day in Baker Street in 1888, and were introduced to Wilhelm Gottsreich Sigimond Von Ormstein, the hereditary king of Bohemia masquerading as Count Von Kramm, a Bohemian nobleman.
Watson also got invited by Sherlock Holmes to work for the king in a task that involve the retrieval of pictorial evidence of the king’s relationship with a woman named, Irene Adler who was an adventuress retired from Opera. Adler was determined to break the King’s relationship with Clotilde Lothman Von Saxe-Meningen, the second daughter to Scandinavian King. The king was sure that if Adler sent the Clotilde photographs as she intended, his fiancée would be agitated and they would cancel their marriage plans. They had to move as quickly as possible to protect the king’s relationship.
Adler had threatened to send the picture on the public announcement of the mutual intention of the King and his fiancée to marry. On getting Adler’s address, Briony Lodge, Holmes left for it the following morning. He found it and after obtaining information about Adler and her routine activities from the surroundings of her address, he went back to the Briony to device a plan. He noticed that Adler and her only male ‘associate’ were moving to the church of St. Monica in the Edgeware road.
He followed him or her and found them stranded as they intended to marry and the clergyman could not bind them because there was no witness. He acted as a witness and went back with broken plans. Holmes devised a plan to know where she keeps the picture, which worked just fine. He then decided to visit Adler with the King and retrieve the picture. They were surprised to realize that Adler knew Holmes and his intentions. She had left London for good with the picture (Doyle 10).
Plot Analysis
The choice of “A Scandal in Bohemia” was obvious, the story is very exiting and its flow cannot be compared to the other two. The theme of the story makes the story interesting to read such that, on starting, the reader cannot pause until he/she sees the culmination of events. For instance, the suspense surrounding the sudden urgency of Adler and Godfrey to go to church makes the reader want to continue reading until he/she knows what was going on. The mixture of the story with numerous conversations adds a sense of reality to it and the reader can visualize the characters in the story and be emotionally attached to it until he/she finishes reading it (Doyle 10).
From the onset, the reader is captured by the author’s use of literary structures like suspense, hyperbole and flashback. Hyperbole is greatly used in the character of Sherlock Holmes. His observation and instinctive skills are greatly exaggerated. Watson describes him as “… the most perfect and observing machine that the world has seen…” (Doyle 10). The whole story is a flashback explaining why Sherlock Holmes referred to Irene Adler as the woman and had great respect for her.
A lot of contrast is also evident in the story. For instance, regardless of the fact that Sherlock Holmes was a drug addict, he was a great scholar with great brains. This can be evidenced by the fact that in the story he used cigars, cocaine and beer. Suspense is evident in several parts of the story. For instance, on receiving a note from the King, Holmes does not exactly know its source and he has to wait for a man in disguise to know where the note if from and the intention of its sender (Doyle 13).
As mentioned earlier, the conversational nature of the story makes it most captivating. The dialog skills of the main character, Sherlock Holmes, make the reader keep on anticipating his responses to the questions he is asked and waiting for comments and suggestions from him. The conversations in the story are also characterized with some level of symbolism that attracts the attention of the reader. For instance, when asking for Adler’s address, Holmes does not ask for it directly. He asks, “… And Mademoiselle’s address?” (Doyle 15).
Conclusion
To conclude, the story has perfectly built characters that make the play interesting and contribute to the building of its theme.
References
Doyle, Conan. (2007). The adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Charleston, SC: Bibliobazaar LLC Publisher. Print.