The Speckled Band had a lot of intriguing moments including the high-level description of particular items or places and the repetition of certain words. This makes sense for a detective story since every detail is vital, but the emphasis on foreignness is what I discovered to be most revealing. When the mystery is solved, it is the result of an exotic snake, even the people first accused were “a band of gipsies.” The fear evoked from the speckled band seemed caused by a fear of otherness or the unknown rather than something familiar. “The presence of gipsies, and the use if the word ‘band,’ which was used by the poor girl, no doubt, to explain the appearance which she had caught a horrid glimpse of by light of her match, were sufficient to put me upon an entirely wrong scent.” (Conan Doyle 151) The word band is even recognized here as being an odd descriptor but it’s important since it is a multifaceted word that also can describe a group or “band” of people; hence Sherlock Holmes being thrown off the scent. The mention of the brief firelight also lends to the idea of fear being caused by the unknown. The dark setting, young frightful woman, mysterious sounds, and unidentified speckled band all curate a perfectly disastrous atmosphere lightly illuminated with a match. When it all unravels, the reader can finally discover why certain words such as band or certain motifs such as the exotic animals are stressed throughout the story.
2 thoughts on “A fear of the Unknown”
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I agree with your interpretation that the story is riddled with xenophobia and a fear of anything that isn’t British. It seems that Sherlock Holmes’s biases also had an effect on the story. Usually, he is known for his ability to solve mysteries and pay attention to small details most people wouldn’t notice, however in this story he is led astray. I believe this is because of his own xenophobia, he was expecting the gypsies to be tied to the mystery somehow because of his own bias.
The emphasis on the idea of foreign objects and people within “The Speckled Band” was used by Arthur Conan Doyle numerous times. I think that this goes along with the conversation that we had about what goes into gothic literature. We discussed this idea of exoticism and how it is these small details that create some of the biggest “disturbances” in the text. This can kind of be coupled in with the idea of madness and how out of the ordinary some of these occurrences are.