Posted on 08/29/2011 6:50:40 PM PDT by nickcarraway
How so?
How absurd.
Actually, it is rather an odd Sherlock Holmes story to choose, if the kids are only going to read one. I’d say “The Hound of the Baskervilles” would be a better choice. Or a collection of the earlier stories, when Watson first meets Holmes.
It does certainly present the Mormons in a bad light. But it does have some historical basis. Whether it’s factual or not I’ll leave to others to argue.
This was one of my favorite books when I was twelve. I have it on my iPhone. It’s a great tale.
It was Doyle's first Holmes story, and he needed an exotic setting. To a Scot of Irish extraction living in London, the Mormons were as unknown(and as exotic) as the Andaman Islander who figured as a villain in The Sign of the Four. He just needed a plausible motive for his murderer to pursue his quarry, and a sympathetic motive at that. So the villain was a wicked Mormon who was involved in the Mountain Meadows massacre, and stole the murderer's sweetheart. Half the book ("In the Country of the Saints") is just the sort of blood and thunder nonsense you would expect from an Englishman who had never been near America, let alone Utah or the West.
It's not really that good a book, although Holmes is one of those characters who takes on a life of his own. I agree that the Hound is a much better story, written much later in Doyle's career - better plot, better characters, better written.
My real question is why they ever picked Study in Scarlet as a typical Holmes story.
Moriarity would laugh....
What is kind of amusing to me is that a lot of the kids will read this on their own. The story has been “banned” so it must contain some material that will just curl your hair, right? Copies of it will probably be passed around secretly during lunch. LOL!!
"If we take you with us," he said, in solemn words, "it can only be as believers in our own creed. We shall have no wolves in our fold. Better far that your bones should bleach in this wilderness than that you should prove to be that little speck of decay which in time corrupts the whole fruit. Will you come with us on these terms?"
It refers to a killing by cult members.
This was the introduction to the world of Sherlock Holmes.
Watson and Stamford intrude upon Holmes at a laboratory in which Holmes has just discovered a reagent (you will recall that Holmes, in the Conan Doyle oeuvre was a brilliant chemist) that was precipitated solely by hemoglobin, thus a definitive test for blood traces, which was otherwise unavailable at that time.
This attempted banning of the first Conan Doyle Holmes novella is neither more nor less than the PC addicts run amok. Please keep in mind that Conan Doyle wrote the interlude of the story, "On the Great Alkali Plain", et seq., to allow the killer, Jefferson Hope, to explain his motivation for the murders, not to bash the Mormon religion. Any faith has had, always, those adherents who mouth the creed and violate it an hour later, and such were Drebber and Stangerson, both renegade Mormons.
Why this alleged "educational" establishment should attempt to ban a quite plausible story, in its day, of love and revenge, is utterly beyond me. As far as that goes, Hugo Baskerville's conduct was infinitely worse, and storywise offered much less in the way of the exhibition of the science of detection. (Read it again, m'FRiend, I've nothing to sell you, and you will see straightaway for yourself).
Best to you, as always, and FReegards!
Conan Doyle used a historical incident he read about as the basis. It wasn’t based on an any axe to grind, just something exotic in 1887 London. Conan Doyle later made that clear. He privately expressed this to Brigham Young’s great nephew.
Not at all. Holmes tracked down the killer of the two men who had murdered his love. That they were Mormons, and not incidentally renegade Mormons, is not and never was central to the story. The STORY was, as the chapter headings make quite clear, the practice of the art of detection.
The whole, “Utah flashback,” is what Hitchcock would call a, “Maguffin.” The author doesn’t care about it, but it strongly motivates the character/s.
A slight misstatement regarding "The Sign of Four". Small was the villain; he participated directly in the robbery of the merchant, and his murder. Tonga, the Andaman Islander, only killed Sholto because he thought it would serve Small, his only friend in the world. Mistakenly, of course.
FReegards!
Indeed, and VERY well said. I hadn’t thought of Hitchcock in this context, but you are exactly correct, and my compliments!
As you recall, naturally, John Ferrier’s reply to that statement was: “Guess I’ll come with you on any terms.”, which caused, as Conan Doyle noted, even the stern countenances of the Mormon leaders to curl into a smile.
Okay, so replace it with the Book of Daniel.
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