Sign of Four Cheat Sheet

Analysing the extract 

Spend at least 10 minutes carefully reading the extract, annotating it with ideas and planning your response.
Conan Doyle writes in a specific style. Here are common techniques/stylistic features that are VERY likely to feature in your extract to comment on:

• Watson’s retrospective narrative perspective – Watson is narrating this story from the beginning even though he already knows the solution to the crime/mystery. He is clearly a biased narrator as he is extremely loyal to Holmes and idolises Mary Morstan. His closeness to the story makes us as readers feel privileged that we are getting to hear the mystery first-hand. 
• Dialogue – Conan Doyle uses the way the character’s speak to highlight social differences and difference in personality/skill/intelligence/morality – e.g. Thaddeus Sholto whimpers hysterically whereas Sherlock speaks calmly and coherently (but sometimes to himself, because his mind is working so much faster than everyone else’s
• Duality/Juxtaposition of opposites – reason is often opposed to emotion/dark to light/evil to purity/villain to innocent and Conan Doyle’s language reflects this
• Hyperbole/Exaggeration/Extreme language – Conan Doyle tends to express things in extreme terms ‘unforgivable’ ‘astonishment’ ‘genius’  ‘great price’ this helps to increase tension and excitement, as well as creating a gothic atmosphere
• Symbolism – the darkness of London representing the criminal underworld and blindness to what is really happening (inability to solve the mystery) and lamps/lights representing goodness and the act of detection…. shedding light on the mystery.
• Long sentences – to create a sense of urgency and tension. 
• Character’s physical appearance/body posture/reactions is generally presented as revealing their inner hearts and motivations, e.g. Mary Morstan’s honest appearance contrasted to the ‘brown, monkey-faced’ Jonathan Small
• Imagery of mud, dirt and broken things also reveals whether a place or a character is morally good or bad


‘And in the novel as whole’…? Responding to the second half of the question 

Start your sentences with Conan Doyle – this helps make sure that you are writing about the text as a deliberately constructed work of art that different readers at different times will have quite different reactions to! 
- One of Conan Doyle most effective techniques…… 
- Conan Doyle presents the relationship of Sherlock Holmes and Watson in a deliberately nuanced way
- Conan Doyle constructs/implies/highlights/emphasises…

Key ideas 
• Sign of Four as one of the first detective novels; the genre is still being developed 
• Sign of Four also has features of the historical novel (mutiny novel), romance novel and gothic novel but Conan Doyle is for the first time integrating these different aspects into a new kind of novel – the detective genre. Mary Morstan and Watson’s love story for example is part of the backdrop to the main plot of solving the mystery of the Sign of Four. 
• London as a place almost has the same importance as a character in The Sign of Four
• Race is explored – Holmes seems to agree with contemporary academic research that suggested that criminals were likely to have certain facial features. This would have made the novel seem very cutting-edge in Conan Doyle’s day but is more disturbing for a modern reader.
• Gender is also explored through the presentation of Mary Morstan. Mary is in many ways, a strong female character but she is still portrayed as something that could be possessed, ‘Whoever had lost a treasure, I knew that night that I had gained one’.