Share your literary essay with the rest of the students that chose this short story. Take some time to read 2 or 3 other essays. Comment on them. Your comment should be about something you noticed them doing well from our lessons. For example, "You did a really good job explaining your evidence.
The adventure of the speckled band takes place in 1883 when a 30 year old woman comes to sherlock to investigate the strange noises coming from her bedroom at night in the house she and her father share. They investigate and find out that it’s her own father doing it and he has already killed her sister. The theme I think the author is trying to show is that women should have equal rights as men.
ReplyDelete1883 in London wasn’t a very good time for women. They were basically maids being ordered around by men. Women were not allowed to leave the house without permission from their husband or father. Their job was to care for the children and clean the house.They didn’t have basic rights and any money they had went to their husband.
In the short story, the woman (Helen Stoner) says “My mother had a considerable amount of money--not less than £1000--and this she bequeathed to my father. (Bequeathing is when a wife gives all of her money to her husband.) This shows that women could not be trusted with money and further showing that women were thought of as less than men back then.
Another quote from this story is “Five livid spots, the marks of 4 fingers and a thumb were printed on her wrist.” This shows the theme by showing you that she was very mistreated by her father. She had to sneak out of the house to get to Sherlock because her father wouldn’t let her go.
The author uses the figurative language of imagery here to really show you what her father was doing to her in that house. “She raised her veil as she spoke, and we could see that she was indeed in a pitiable state of agitation, her face all drawn and grey, with restless frightened eyes, like those of a hunted animal. Her features that of a 30 year old but her hair shot with premature gray and her expression weary and haggard.
The death of her father at the end frees her and gives her rights to do as she wishes. This brings us back to the theme that women should have equal rights as men. How Helen was getting controlled by her father but, in the end was freed from what controlled her and had happiness.
In the short story, “The Adventure of the Speckled Band,” by Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes and his assistant, Watson, investigate a murder and try to prevent another. The suspect, Dr. Grimesby Roylott, is the stepfather of the victim, Julia Stoner, and her twin sister, Helen. When Helen becomes suspicious of Roylott attempting to murder her for her money, she seeks out Holmes and Watson. In the end, Dr. Roylott ended up paying for his sins with his life by the same means in which he took Julia’s. The theme of this story is that violence eventually recoils upon the violence.
ReplyDeleteThe reason that Dr. Roylott killed Helen’s sister was for her money. In the setting of this story, women were not allowed to own money. Since Helen was about to get married, she was about to inherit a lot of money from her stepfather. This is why she is skeptical that Roylott wants to kill her as well as her sister. You may think that if women could’ve just owned money, none of this would’ve happened, but I disagree. Roylott may still have died in the end because it didn’t matter if he wanted to kill Helen, he would’ve died either way.
The Adventure of the Speckled Band has a non-linear plot. This is because there is an important piece of foreshadowing, about halfway through the story. When the trio of detectives investigate Roylott’s house, Helen tells Holmes and Watson that they have a pet cheetah and baboon. This hints at the fact the there may be other exotic animals living there.
Later, at the end of the story, it is revealed that Dr. Roylottt killed Julia with a deadly snake. The snake, the weapon he used to commit murder, ended up taking his own life.
Towards the end of the story, Watson, the narrator, uses very descriptive words to describe Dr. Roylott’s then dead body. He describes the body like this, “On the wooden chair, sat Dr. Grimesby Roylott clad in a long grey dressing-gown, his bare ankles protruding beneath, and his feet thrust into red heelless Turkish slippers. Across his lap lay the short stock with the long lash, which we had noticed during the day. His chin was cocked upward and his eyes were fixed in a dreadful rigid stare at the corner of the ceiling. Round his brow he had a peculiar yellow band, which seemed to be bound tightly to his head.”After that, Holmes whispers, “The band, the speckled band!” This is when everyone realizes that the speckled band from the title, was a deadly snake. It is important to realize that this moment is crucial to the plot and to the theme because the author uses imagery.
After it is revealed that the speckled band is a snake and that it is the weapon that caused two deaths, Holmes says a powerful statement that is directly connected to the theme. “Violence does, in truth, recoil upon the violent, and the schemer falls into the pit which he digs for another.” Not only does the quote relate to the theme, but it also has a powerful metaphor. The metaphor relates to the theme because it describes how bad karma can hurt you. The dialogue Holmes uses is important to them because it teaches the lesson of the book and a lesson of life.
In the final page of the story, Watson recaps the details of the crime as well as the aftermath. Overall, the theme of the story is fairly easy to depict. Doyle uses a nn-linear pot, dialogue,imagery, repetition, and metaphors all to teach the audience a lesson, that violence does, in truth, recoil upon the violent.