Watson as a Narrative Device in Conan Doyle's Stories About Sherlock Holmes

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Watson as a Narrative Device in Conan Doyle's Stories About Sherlock Holmes Conan Doyle wrote many stories about Sherlock Holmes, originally for a newspaper called the Strand. In the stories he uses a character called Dr Watson to tell the stories. Watson is Holmes's close friend and companion in solving the mysteries. Watson is very useful for telling the story because he is not quite as smart as Holmes. This helps Conan Doyle because Watson never quite knows what Holmes is thinking. Although Watson is a very smart man, Holmes's mind is completely superior. Another thing about Watson and Holmes's relationship is that although they are very close allies they are complete opposites. For example Watson has lots of friends and was once married, but on the other hand Holmes comes across to the reader as being a loner and doesn't have many friends. Conan Doyle uses Watson very well to emphasis how smart Holmes is. In this chapter of the story in the Red headed league Watson cannot see anything special about the man standing in front of them, but Holmes has other ideas "Beyond the obvious facts that at some time he has done manual labor, that he takes snuff, that he is a freemason, that he has been in china and that he has done a considerable amount of writing lately, apart from that I can deduce nothing else." This make the reader realize just how smart Holmes is in comparison to Watson. There is another example of how Watson is used to show how smart Holmes is in the story of the Engineers thumb. Watson is very highly recommended as a doctor "I thought I'd bring him round myself so he couldn't slip away. There he is all safe and sound. I must go now doctor." What this tells us is that Watson is a very smart man and is very highly regarded, so in theory if Holmes is smarter than Watson he must be a very smart man. Another way that Watson is used very effectively is how Watson sets

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