Technological University of Panama

Colon Regional Center

Faculty of Mechanical Engineering
Student
Josmar Meneses
3-747-935
Group
5LP211
Matter
Technical English
sherlock holmes
Teacher
Rosa Ramos
Year: 2022
Pros of the work
Sherlock Holmes, the most famous detective in the history of literature, is the
protagonist of Arthur Conan Doyle's crime narratives. In each story, Holmes,
buried in his old books, is drawn to the study of crime, distinguished by his
skill in solving mysteries. He is a genius of deduction and logical reasoning,
who uses all his faculties and extraordinary skills of observation to follow the
clues that lead him to reveal the crimes that the official police did not solve.
Equally brilliant are the characters that accompany him: his friend and
inseparable companion, the naïve, kind and careless Dr. Watson, who is the
narrator of the stories, and Professor Moriarty, the famous criminal who
faces the protagonist on more than one occasion. With the title of The
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is grouped the series of narratives of this
author, created around the dynamic personality of Holmes (unforgettable
master of detectives) and that appears in 68 works. After the success of the
first two novels: Study in Scarlet (1887) and The Sign of the Four (1890),
Conan Doyle begins in 1881, to publish in magazines, short stories about
cases of the great detective, who runs an endless number of adventures,
facing his worthy rival, the cunning and brilliant criminal, Moriarty.The
adventures of Sherlock Holmes contains twelve stories with a great thematic
diversity, and apart from the more or less truculent character of the
different cases, the cohesive element of the volume is in the emphasis placed
on the method of reasoning typical of Holmes. The succession of surprises
caused by the process of deduction in each matter, is a sample of why this
detective became world famous and popularized the genre of the crime
novel. From here it emerged; and above all, the cult of Detective Holmes
survives.
Cons of the work

There are phrases that are more famous than their creators themselves, and
there are also phrases that their creators never said but that are inevitably
associated with them. Surely if they had to say a phrase that reminded them
of Sherlock Holmes, they would resort to "Elemental, dear Watson!" But this
expression is an example of what I said at the beginning.
And it is that the character of Conan Doyle never pronounced this phrase in
the novels and stories that he starred. The most he did, on one occasion, was
to say elementary in response to a phrase by Watson. But not only that, it
seems that Holmes, whom we all imagine with a hunter's cap, never wore
such a cap and this image is due to an illustration by Sydney Paget for a
magazine. Moreover, also the smoking pipe that is part of the iconography of
the literary character is a hairpiece. It is due to a theatrical adaptation of the
character in the 20s of the last century.
What I think of the work
Herlock Holmes is one of the most important fictional characters of all time,
as demonstrated that time Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, its creator, tried to finish
him off and the masses threw themselves on him. And I say fictional
although it is more or less popular that the detective received letters asking
for his help to solve cases, which I find somewhat surprising, both for the
request for help itself and because someone thinks that Sherlock Holmes was
a real detective, flesh and blood. But even being fictional, it seems that it is
based on a real man, specifically a Scottish doctor named Joseph Bell.
This man, born in 1837, was a doctor whose analytical reasoning Arthur
Conan Doyle met when he began studying medicine at the University of
Edinburgh, where Bell was a professor. The student took as a pattern for his
character, for Sherlock Holmes, the teacher and his way of reasoning and
deducing, undoubtedly the most peculiar aspect of the detective.
Bell was an enthusiastic man and was in quarantine when Doyle met him. He
was able to determine many issues of a person after studying in detail his
accent, his way of walking, his clothes ... as Holmes does in his cases. He used
to tell his students the result of his deductions when they had to recognize a
patient, leaving some and others surprised with statements about the
patient's work, their origins... Our professor also influenced the field of
forensic medicine, as seems logical in a man with this way of thinking.
That way of thinking and acting was reflected by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in
the most famous detective in history, who was the pride of both its author
and Dr. Bell himself. He knew how the character had influenced the creation
and showed it off whenever he could. Therefore, after all this, let's be clear
that Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character but inspired by a real character,
who gave him the most important thing, his deductive method.
By the way, an edition of "all Holmes" by Cátedra has just been published a few weeks
ago that looks really magnificent. I recommend it, since in its more than 1600
pages there are stories of Holmes and much more. The exact facts are "All
Sherlock Holmes" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. And all for less than 30 euros.