“To a great mind, nothing is little.” — Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Discussing my one true childhood fictional character crush…The great Sherlock Holmes! The categorization of his character is simply elementary, my dear readers, as is this prep work assigned by the heroic educator, Lauren Swintek!
My favorite hero of all time is Sherlock Holmes from the original novels written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. His character has always been interesting to me and introduced me to the wonderful genres of mystery and crime fiction. Growing up, I would pretend to be like him and solve mysteries (not always murders, mind you!) even to this day. His intelligence and knowledgeable deductions from one glance of a person draws me in. With Watson, he was able to deduce that he was a military doctor who recently worked in Afghanistan and had a watch (I believe) that was gifted to his brother by an ex-wife. What I appreciate most from him is his belief in what knowledge is important. He doesn’t know the order of the solar system but knows other stuff that is more applicable to his work.
In the video, it described Sherlock Holmes to be an “extreme uber match hero” due to his “superhuman intelligence”. This can be true, as I mentioned earlier, because his character draws people in with his unique trait that is special to him. However, from reading many of Doyle’s novels, I would better classify Sherlock Holmes as an antihero. He doesn’t take on cases out of good will and morals. He does them because he gets off on the thrill of interesting cases. In some cases, he goes mad out of boredom and can blatantly reject cases offered to him because they aren’t interesting enough. Sherlock doesn’t have many friends or girlfriends. He didn’t quite understand the social cues and feelings of others, dismissing them in lieu of what he knew (cold hard facts and deductions). However, ever since meeting John Watson, he has been a bit more careful, though that is his main fault as a hero. With his deductions and problem-solving, he has helped save lives, but the way in which he solves the cases may seem very unconventional and in some cases, heartless. For a lot of cases, Sherlock Holmes withholds information and doesn’t give out his deductions until it is almost too late. However, he reveals that he had figured the case out all from the very beginning. This is how he has come to be despised by other characters for treating some cases like its a game to get off on, not your typical hero. Despite this, he does contribute to the common good, even if he doesn’t represent your average hero.
I think it is possible for him to be on a monomyth journey, but the plot progression (incorporating Moriarty) is very slow because it tends to focus on his ability to deduce for cases throughout most of the novels. There will be breaks where it does incorporate details of the overarching plot with Sherlock and his archenemy, Moriarty. I don’t think he could be on it if I were looking at it with Campbell’s 12 stages. He never goes into a different world as his work has always been in London. The only instance that I could find this applicable would be after he stages his death and returns after some time in a world that knows him as a dead fraud. I haven’t read after his faked suicide, so I’m not too sure on if his journey as a hero is a monomyth journey.
