“You interest me very much, Mr. Holmes. I had hardly expected so dolichocephalic A skull or such well-marked supra-orbital development. Would you have any objection to my running my finger along your parietal fissure? A cast of your skull, sir, until the original is available, would be an ornament to any anthropological museum. it is not my intention to be fulsome, but I confess that I covet your skull.”(10)
This is a passage at the very beginning of the novel when Sherlock is introduced to Dr. James Mortimer. This passage striked me as very monstrous and creepy in nature. It paints Dr. Mortimer as having some secret devious villiness nature. Dr. Mortimer is a Phrenologist and is deeply interested in Sherlock’s brain. This is most likely because of his almost supernatural talent for observation. So along with the mystery of Baskersvill, there is also the mystery of the great Sherlock Holmes. Something that specifically irked me about this passage was when Dr. Mortimer said \u201c…running my finger along your parietal fissure?\u201d. This quote made me feel like Sherlock was a specimen in a lab, a great gift to science rather than a human being. I can imagine the joy that would come with his death and the obtaining of his skull. The way it would be prodded at and picked apart. This great man shrouded in mystery being the object of every Phrenologist’s affection,\u201dI confess that I covet your skull.\u201d This passage is overall a very strange and out of place thing. For starters it is presented so early in the novel. It also puts Holmes in a less than ideal light. From his other books and various popular culture, we are used to seeing Sherlock as the one who has all the answers and is the one picking people and facts apart. Yet here, the narrative is flipped. This is leading me to wonder if this is an indication of coming strife for Holmes later on. I think this because we here Mr. Mortimer talked of the \u201cbest\u201d a few pages earlier. Saying that Sherlock is number two. Does this mean that Sherlock will become somewhat of a Watson to this greater entity? <\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“You interest me very much, Mr. Holmes. I had hardly expected so dolichocephalic A skull or such well-marked supra-orbital development. Would you have any objection to my running my finger along your parietal fissure? A cast of your skull, sir, until the original is available, would be an ornament to any anthropological museum. it is … Continue reading The Sacred Skull<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5364,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[169399],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2023-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2514","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\/5364"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2514\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}