THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES - WEEK 2 - CHAPTER 1 - 2

THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES by Arthur Conan Doyle

I am giddy with excitement diving back into this classic "who done it" with you all! So before I share a few things take a minute and think about what stuck out to you in these first 2 chapters. What did you learn about Holmes and Watson initially, and then what did you learn about the case itself?

The first thing that jumped right out to me is the statement that Holmes is usually late in the mornings. Now it has been a few years since I went through and read the entire collection of Sherlock Holmes' cases, but Holmes is a man of order, deduction, and of science, and frankly, that statement seemed a little out of character when I think of him.

Next, Holmes loves to play this little game of figuring people out based on tiny clues (in this case a walking stick), and he's typically extraordinarily good at it. Watson has joined in on this game. Sherlock listens to Watson's thoughts on who the owner of the walking stick is and congratulates him in his deduction but later corrects him. However, we learn that HOLMES got some of his deductions WRONG. That is not typical, and I found myself asking if this was one of the times that the author, Doyle, was frustrated with his character.

So we meet the client, Dr. Mortimer, and he has an extraordinary situation, an ancient curse that is supposedly placed on the Baskerville family, of which his patient, Sir Charles Baskerville, has just perished from. I immediately began to think about the scriptural passages in Exodus about the iniquity of the fathers being passed down generationally. Holmes dismisses the curse as fairytale fodder basically because curses have no place in the mind of a rational, systematic person. But Sir Charles wasn't like Sir Hugo (the original recipient of the curse) was he? Sir Charles was a widower known for his generosity. He was also very resourceful. The family estate of Baskerville Hall had fallen into hard times, but Sir Charles had gone out and made his fortune elsewhere and brought it back. His health was a little bit in question, his nerves were shot, and it's clear he believed the curse. He wouldn't leave the Yew path to go out on the moors at night until supposedly this night, and he ends up dead with gigantic hound prints close by. I think Holmes might be hooked.

Now, it's your turn! What's got you curious? What did you notice? There's lots of directions you can take this conversation!