“Now is the dramatic moment of fate, Watson, when you hear a step upon the stair which is walking into your life, and you know not whether for good or ill. What does Dr. James Mortimer, the man of science, ask of Sherlock Holmes, the specialist in crime? Come in!” (pg 7)<\/p>\n
This passage hints at the relationship between science and crime which are incredibly strong themes throughout the book and throughout many other novels written around the same time because of the industrial revolution and the ripple effect that technology and new ideas seemed to cause. In Wednesday’s class we discussed the standardisation of education and the rise in literacy rates which sparked interest in people to gain knowledge and information in all things new and exciting which, at the time, revolved massively around science and medicine. In 1901 when the book was set, a year prior to it being written, Queen Victoria died at the ripe old age of 81, which caused a massive negative reaction in the public\u00a0as it was common folklore and believed by the English of that period, that if Queen Victoria died before the age of 101, God would be angered and as punishment, the common people of England would suffer. God wasn’t angered and therefore no Englishmen were punished, however, because of the amount of belief people had in this folklore, many turned to and were\u00a0influenced by recent scientific discoveries and scientific explanations instead of immediately turning to God.<\/p>\n
Referring back to the passage when Holmes says, ‘Now is the dramatic moment of fate, Watson, when you hear a step upon the stair which is walking into your life, and you know not whether for good or ill.’, I feel as though Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was using his character of Sherlock Holmes to ask the questions he would be asking. Specifically questions regarding modern technology,\u00a0were they to be trusted? Were\u00a0they safe? Were\u00a0they reliable? What were their purpose? Especially in 1901, when God and religion as sturdy pillars in society were being doubted and criticised, people wanted something to believe in and someone to answer their questions. Without any other way to release his opinions into the public, Doyle might have, in a sense, used his characters as a communication device between himself and his readers.<\/p>\n
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“Now is the dramatic moment of fate, Watson, when you hear a step upon the stair which is walking into your life, and you know not whether for good or ill. What does Dr. James Mortimer, the man of science, ask of Sherlock Holmes, the specialist in crime? Come in!” (pg 7) This passage hints … Continue reading Newfound Beliefs and the Possible Absence of Religion?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2749,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[123782],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2016-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2749"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}