Appointment in Samsara Part 1: Fatalism and the Ghost Driver
What the Appointment in Samarra can tell us about the psychological truth of Series 4.
Upon first viewing of The Six Thatchers one might take the tale of “The Appointment in Samarra” as reflecting Sherlock evading death time and time again; he avoids death in TRF, he leaves, comes back, is shot, dies, and miraculously comes back. Then near the end of TST he stares down yet another bullet and still avoids death. Mary apparently wasn’t so lucky. Charlie Welsborough returns from Tibet, much like Sherlock Holmes, and is killed. So how has Sherlock managed to avoid death? This is the question that — if you have been following “blog theory” — our favorite unreliable narrator, John Watson, is asking himself. Or rather, he’s asking: Why haven’t I?
A Fish Tale
The opening of TST tells us everything we are about to see is a lie — Doctored footage. Following opening credits, curiously, we don’t jump into a crime for Sherlock Holmes to solve. Instead, we are told a tale by a voiceover narration much like TAB. Our blogger is telling us a story within a story. With the imagery of water and a shark (loaded on its own), Sherlock tells us:
There was once a merchant in the famous market at Baghdad. One day he saw a stranger looking at him in surprise…and he knew that the stranger was Death. Pale and trembling, the merchant fled the marketplace and made his way many, many miles to the city of Samarra, for there he was sure Death could not find him. But when at last he came to Samarra, the merchant saw, waiting for him, the grim figure of Death. “Very well,” said the merchant. “I give in. I am yours. But tell me, why did you look surprised when you saw me this morning in Baghdad?” “Because,” said Death, “I had an appointment with you tonight in Samarra.”
Given the premise of “doctored footage,” the validity of this tale should come into question too. There are some immediately curious things to note about it. It is not new, nor is it entirely accurate to the source material— it is a retelling itself. The often referenced “source material” for the show, isn’t even the source material. W. Somerset Maugham did not dream up the fable on his own but took inspiration from tales about the prophet Solomon meeting an Angel of Death and rewrote it for a western audience. He didn’t publish it in a collection, though. Maugham’s version itself is a story within a story.
Sheppey is a play from 1933 which chronicles a good man’s tragic fate to the end of his rope until Death himself visits to take Sheppey with him. The tale of “The Appointment in Samarra” (as retold by W. Somerset Maugham [1933]) is told to Sheppey by Death in his own point of view. It’s the servant, who was sent on an errand for the merchant, that is frightened by Death in the marketplace and leaves for Samarra to avoid his death. The merchant who had lent him the horse confronts Death: “Why did you make a threating gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning?” and Death replies: “That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Bagdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.”
The fact that this tale has been retold so many times, and in different ways to fit its purpose, is significant. The way in which it’s changed and why should also give us pause. So, whose appointment is it now? The merchant or the servant? (you…or me?)
Once TST properly begins, we see Sherlock rapid fire solving cases where the cause of death is not what it first appears. We’re interrupted by John checking his phone to see 59 missed calls because Mary is in labor, likely a reference to Shakespeare’s Sonnet 59. John is driving the car as Mary is just about to give birth: “Which, labouring for invention, bear amiss / the second burthen of a former child” which is a wonderful metaphor for the creative process (or John’s). Another line, “Show me your image in some antique book,” means stories get recycled. Art imitates life. Even people will imitate the actions of characters in books — nature imitating art imitating nature.
‘There is nothing new under the sun. It has all been done before.’
The wheel turns, nothing is ever new.
The episode The Six Thatchers is a recycled story from John’s blog of the same name. The opening tale is also a recycled story from a recycled story. I’ll even argue the underlying story of Series 4 is a recycled story three times over at least.
The Driver or the Victim?
Our heroes are eventually given their first real case of the episode — John later decides to title this story “The Ghost Driver” — another one where the cause of death is not what it appears. We are shown David Welsborough’s fiftieth birthday party. The Welsboroughs are presumably very rich, high-class, and conservative given their very expensive looking house and their love of Thatcher. David gets a call from his son, Charlie, who asks him to take a picture of something on his car to settle a bet. He does, the call is dropped, and he goes back to the party. Then a week later a drunk driver smashes into the car which explodes, only to reveal: Charlie.
John tells us: “The body in the car…dead for a week.”
Charlie died, undiscovered, hidden by his own disguise — a car seat cover (made of vinyl, cheaper than leather). He’d blended in with the car and was only revealed until the cover was burned away. Disguises, of course, are always a self-portrait.
While re-reading Poetry or Truth Part II (The Street Scene), a particular quote stood out to me:
“The point is that the demonstrator acts the behaviour of driver or victim or both in such a way that the bystanders are able to form an opinion about the accident.”
We can view Charlie as a mirror for John in this scene for many reasons, first, because of his hair, wardrobe, and the fact that John is the author of this story. Charlie has returned early from Tibet (where Holmes went post-Reichenbach) and his parents are “posh” like Sherlock, but we don’t have evidence to suggest that Sherlock’s parents are Thatcher loving conservatives; we do, on the other hand, get evidence from THOB that Major Barrymore is a stand-in for John’s father. He is a Thatcher loving conservative in the military which is clearly associated with John. Since we know little to nothing about his life before medical school, besides the fact that he has a sister, these scraps of characterization choices have even more weight. Most likely John’s father was also military and conservative, and he could never imagine coming out to him. It’s also notable (given food=sex subtext) that when Charlie calls, his mother is concerned if her son is “eating properly” . . . yikes.
Charlie planned to surprise his father and in an imagined scene where he didn’t die of a seizure we see a rainbow over his face as he ‘comes out’ of his disguise. We are seeing a recreation — a street scene or perhaps a rehearsal — of both the driver and the victim so we may form our opinion of it. I don’t think John will necessarily crash his car drunk driving or commit suicide a la Jennifer Wilson in a car, but metaphorically, we can see he plans to commit suicide at the very least. In his mind, he is the drunk driver on the run and he is the kid who will die before he has a chance to take off his disguise. He also doesn’t think he will be discovered and helped until it’s too late.
Given that we are presented with Charlie’s death and told John plans to write the story up on the blog, this could foreshadow that’s he’s making it look like he has planned his suicide in this way. Or it could be him simply leaving behind a little puzzle that foreshadows his death in a published novel, titled “The Six Thatchers” or “The Ghost Driver”— so that the bystander can form an opinion about why he died whenever he is found.
Appointment in Samarra
Another recycled version of the Appointment in Samarra is from a novel by John O’Hara. I’m not the first to bring this up but others only did, as far as I know, immediately after TST aired. Personally, I’d learned of it a year later in 2018 while scrolling through google images to find this picture:
It’s not incredibly significant that there should be a book with this title in existence, but that racing car on the front cover really caught my eye. Even in 2018 the teaser trailer for Series 4 was fresh in my mind in which we saw a bright red car racing through the streets away from the police and several quick shots later we get two frames: 1) John driving a car and 2) the shot of a car crashing into the Welsborough’s car, placed in such rapid succession and so out of context, to mislead you into thinking John would crash or get hit. Needless to say, even without Charlie as John mirror subtext, John + car was an association burned into my memory.
It was also a pleasant surprise/horrifying shock to discover the plot of the novel not only involved a car related death but a suicide as I’d pointed out in this post. That would align with what we had already been speculating, that John’s story was of him being “alone, suicidal, and strapped for cash.” The cause of death being carbon-monoxide poisoning was also intriguing as it aligned with my theory about Jennifer Wilson (ASIP) foreshadowing John’s suicide by a form of ingestion of alcohol, sleeping pills, or poison etc. The specifics don’t matter, but all I knew was — it’s not a gun and it’s not fire. Those are metaphors and red herrings, in my opinion, which I will explain eventually. Still, the matter of the car specifically was a puzzle since I am not the only one theorizing about him in a room somewhere similar to Ajay (TST), Jennifer Wilson, a potential The Valley of Fear reference, and “Eurus’s” song/riddle: “Save my soul. Seek my room.” So, why the car?
My examination ended after initially finding this novel in 2018, since it could just be a coincidence (don’t say it) and it’s an old American novel that I’d never even heard of and I’m an American. So what are the odds, right? Wrong. RadioTimes had even mentioned it in their article from January 1st, 2017, so it was at least a little worth looking into. In the article they also quote Steven Moffat at a press conference saying, “Mary’s death was inevitable because in Arthur Conan Doyle’s source books, we discover that Dr Watson is bereaved.” Her death was predetermined. Her choices, Sherlock’s choices, John’s choices, Norbury’s choices, chance…none of these things ‘caused’ her death nor the way it happened, because it was just “inevitable” and the author god willed it to be, apparently. Predetermination and fatalism are the themes of the tale after all.
Another reason I thought it was certainly worth looking into, despite my never hearing of it, is historically both the tale and the novel have been favored by the British. The retold tale was an excerpt from the British playwright W. Somerset Maugham’s play Sheppy (1933), who popularized the original tale for the western world. John O’Hara was an American author and the story takes place in America, very decidedly so, though his protagonist’s name is Julian English and O’Hara included Maugham’s tale at the beginning of the novel before naming it after the tale. Going back to even 1963, though, according to a review by Jesse Bier, “It has been over a quarter of a century now since British reviewers. . .enthusiastically received John O’Hara’s Appointment in Samarra. It has taken twenty-seven years for Americans to catch up with our own.”
Another line from Bier’s review I agree with: “the subtlety is unexpected — and thereby more persuasive — because the action is so overt the characterization so real, the style so natural and disarming that the allegory is quite rightly a substructure rather than a visible and distracting edifice.” Reading aloud the tale not just at the beginning of TST but at the end so it’s bookended, is not at all subtle. It draws attention to the moral you were supposed to learn, rather than trusting in the story to do the talking. A similar criticism was given to Sheppey (1933) given that Death is inserted into the story and spells out the “moral.” Additionally, in TST the Author Mark Gatiss/Mycroft reminds Sherlock and the audience in the middle of the episode that we should be thinking about the tale of Samarra and the question of predetermination. We are pulled out of the story multiple times by a blue haze and water rippling over the screen, as Sherlock has a “premonition,” which is a direct visual callback to the opening tale.
Personally, I call that a “visible and distracting edifice.”
Sherlock: There’s something important about this, I’m sure. Maybe it’s Moriarty. Maybe it’s not, but something’s coming.
Mycroft: Are you having a premonition, brother mine?
Sherlock: The world is woven from billions of lives, every strand crossing every other. What we call premonition is just movement of the web. If you could attenuate to every strand of quivering data, the future would be entirely calculable, as inevitable as mathematics.
Mycroft: Appointment in Samarra.
Sherlock: I’m sorry?
Mycroft: The merchant who can’t outrun Death. You always hated that story as a child. Less keen on predestination back then.
Sherlock: I’m not sure I like it now.
Mycroft: You wrote your own version, as I remember. Appointment in Sumatra. The merchant goes to a different city and is perfectly fine.
Sherlock: Goodnight, Mycroft.
Mycroft: Then he becomes a pirate, for some reason.
In sharp contrast to the purposely unconvincing narrative that TST is selling, the story of Appointment in Samarra (1934) does actually tell a persuasive story to convince you of the character’s inevitable downfall.
My brother has the brain of a scientist or a philosopher yet he elects to be a detective. What might we deduce about his heart?
The Philosopher Antithesis
The “original” tale has a predeterministic and fatalistic moral: higher beings determined it so death is inevitable and running away is futile — don’t bother trying. Sherlock’s view in the scene with Mycroft in TST is strict determinism, more or less, but it’s practically absurd because it is humanly impossible to calculate every decision or account perfectly the odds of chance. Physics says it could be possible, but we’re talking about our nice-ish neighborhood gay detective, who isn’t quite that good.
The show pokes fun at this later when Mary decides where to go based entirely on the “roll of a dice.” Sherlock pretends to have calculated where she went, but no they used a tracking device. Then, in TLD, Sherlock is suddenly capable of predicting the future again and this time with complete accuracy. Totally absurd. In the reality of the show, Sherlock’s view is more realistic — slightly more indeterministic than totally deterministic on a sliding scale, because his logic is more like that of statistical causality:
Things happened because cause(s) + reaction(s) = outcome, while allowing for probability of events along the way in his deductions and/or when making decisions. I’m no expert, but…sounds like chess — the usual kind, anyway. This is the line of thinking that Sherlock has in the “reality” of the show. Series 4, however, is more obvious in showing the viewer a different take on how Sherlock thinks or ‘should’ think, though it is questioned throughout.
Our preconceived notion of Sherlock Holmes is of a brain without a heart. Yet, Mycroft/Gatiss, poses the question: “My brother has the brain of a scientist or a philosopher yet he elects to be a detective. What might we deduce about his heart?” The show is exploring the question of what it means to be a detective and if he can be one at all without a heart.
Thesis: Sherlock should be a calculating machine. He has limitations, but without a heart he is nearly infallible if emotions do not cloud his judgement— a Scientist
Antithesis: Sherlock needs to better understand “human nature.” He should also just be so good at calculating the odds and predicting the future that he becomes superhuman beyond realism, no need for a heart either.
— a Philosopher
Our synthesis should be him as a scientist who understands human nature. The best way for him to do this is to embrace his emotions, understand his own human nature, and I daresay be fulfilled as a human being. He will be a Detective with a heart, but how do they go about convincing the audience of this? You might say — well, duh Johnlock! — but real talk, it must be built into the show’s argument completely so that the former is undebatable. Following the “Roadmap to Change,” they must achieve synthesis by returning “home” to the same thematic scenario Sherlock was in at the end of ASIP, but this time having changed and learned his crucial lesson. This will allow him to survive Jeff Hope’s version of chess on his own, without John shooting his dark mirror. It doesn’t matter if Sherlock picked the right/wrong pill, what matters is that it ended in John’s foreshadowed suicide. He narratively picked the wrong pill.
Jeff Hope’s version of chess is a threat (gun) forcing you to pick between two pills — a 50/50 chance. He makes one move in pushing a pill forward initiating a psychological game. Sherlock as the “Scientist” relies on probability. If you take this away from him, you reveal a weakness. Jeff Hope is motivated by a love for his children who he wants to provide for after he is dead. Sherlock has no such motivation nor does he understand “human nature” outside of statistics; he cannot play psychological chess.
The show’s hypothesis is: Sherlock cannot be the Best Detective unless he can “win” psychological chess. He cannot win “chess” unless he has embraced his heart and his motivation is love. What does winning psychological chess even look like then? Sherlock does not know the answer to this question, of course. He must continue to test the scientist thesis to its limits and the show will do the same for the philosopher antithesis.
John also has a journey to go on in a philosophical sense, one that I never noticed until now. He is traditionally the “Author,” so his viewpoint must be challenged. His journey toward change via synthesis runs parallel but opposite to Sherlock’s, until they will eventually meet in the middle. Sherlock starts out farther on the extreme of determinism than he should be. John, however, swings wildly between Predeterminism and Indeterminism (Chance or luck) — one of the many aspects of himself he thinks he should “choose a side” on. Spoiler alert: it’s neither. Jennifer Wilson presumably left her fate up to a 50/50 chance and played the revenge game. If you would like my more in-depth thoughts on the foreshadowing role of “Rachel” and the color pink in regards to John’s journey you can read this post. To summarize, John must learn to play his own version of chess where he has more “hope” to be saved. He needs to also be motivated by love to save himself from his false belief — that his fate is doomed, because chance and circumstance are constantly working against him.
Throughout Series 1 we see things happen to John. He chances upon Mike in the park. He picks between the two buildings at Roland Kerr Community College and by chance gets the wrong one, so he has to make a decision that is an outside variable. In TBB, (the ‘lucky cat’ episode) so much bad luck seems to happen to John. His card doesn’t work. He gets arrested. The writing on the wall gets painted over. He gets mistaken for Sherlock. However, in most of these scenarios there was a choice or series of choices that led to whatever happened. In TGG, as a contrast to TBB’s bad luck angle, the opposite happens where everything is because it was orchestrated by Moriarty — no coincidences. This is what John is slowly learning until he tips in the direction of an opposite extreme that culminates in Series 4.
The most important question John asks in Series 3: why did Mary have to turn out to be a lying, manipulative ex-assassin? Sherlock tells him “because you chose her.” “Why is everything always my fault?!” is all John can ask and that is the depressing state of mind we leave John in going into Series 4. Probability, chance, determinism, and the question of how did we get where we are and how to choose where to go next are running themes. It’s on John’s mind and he’s currently leaning heavily on the side of predeterminism with an unhealthy dose of fatalism.
Throughout the show we see a series of symbols and shorthand imagery that remind you of or exemplify all the variations of the Philosophy question: Determinism vs Indeterminism.
Examples:
a. Two pills, one move: psychological chess
b. The Lucky Cat: chance or predetermined (depends on perspective)
c. Puppet/pawn: John’s life is under someone else’s control — determinism
d. Spider/spider-web: someone’s created scenario — determinism
e. Train: on a predetermined path
f. Coin or Coin flip: 50/50 chance, with purpose to make a decision (Mary)
g. Dice: chance, indeterminism
h. Premonition: Strict determinism
The appearance of a plane, car, or train car, when given enough emphasis, is used throughout the show to signify the attempt at avoiding fate or taking control, among other things that I will cover throughout this meta series.
What’s the point of making an appointment if they can’t even stick to it?
— TBB
Appointment in Samarra (1934)
The setting is high society Pennsylvania in the 1930s with expensive cars, country clubs and speakeasies. It’s the Great Depression, but our characters are mostly wealthy, just financially insecure. The Great War is an enormously important backdrop that is tied to every character. The men it seems all fought in the Great War, everyone, except Julian English. He came very close to it, but when he was about to go, it ended. Everyone around him seems to have fought and received honors. Even an ancestor of his father, Dr. English, fought in the Revolutionary War. He missed out on the glory (and an early death).
He missed his “appointment.” Now he sells cars for a living.
“I’m Captain John Watson Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers.”
“Retired. You could be a used car salesman now for all I know.”
Appointment with the Dentist
The society Julian English belongs to is one devoid of true moral principles. People are shallow and concerned with appearances. Julian is a man with several vices, but considers himself above everyone, or at least he sees through the thin veneer of social niceties.
[A reviewer] was disturbed by the ‘thoroughgoing vulgarity’ of the novel; the characters had ‘no values’ . . . another reviewer concluded that the book amounted to ‘a skillful bit of writing about perfectly worthless people.’
— “Appointment with the Dentist: O’Hara’s Naturalistic Novel” by Scott Donaldson
Julian is at the top of the social ladder looking down on everyone else. “Such a position, however solid it may seem, is necessarily precarious and depends on adherence to certain unwritten but nonetheless inviolable rules of behavior.” (x) These rules pertain to decorum and class expectation; they uphold the social hierarchy through manufactured appearances of morality.
When Julian is losing his grip on a good image and social position, he is reminded of dentists:
Julian wiped the water off his face with a napkin. “I don’t want to fight you.” He wondered, but did not turn his head to ascertain it, whether the men at the lawyers’ table had seen the incident. He heard some children playing in the street and he thought of horrible Saturday mornings at the dentist’s, when he was a kid and horses were being whipped and children were playing in the street and the car to Collieryville would be ringing its bell.
Meanwhile, Julian describes his mother-in-law as the kind of person who follows every rule to a tee:
She also would have made a good ad for spectacles; but she also would have made a good ad for drinking a cup of hot water in the morning, Don’t Worry, take a nap every afternoon, walk a mile every day, the Golden Rule, visit your dentist twice a year, and all the other codes that she had the time and the means to live by.
…
“[Gum is] really very good for the digestion, and I think the muscles of the jaw need the exercise. How are your teeth, Caroline?”
“I’m going to have to have a wisdom tooth out, Dr. Patterson says.”
One’s teeth are the visible, physical manifestation of a bone deep morality and everything “correct.” They are also a sign of “eating” habits.
GATISS: He’s an avuncular, funny seeming man with terrible teeth. We’ve given him terrible teeth, which are symbolic of the rot inside him. (x)
Parallel to Julian’s mother-in-law, Mycroft “I’ll be mother” Holmes is everything morally good by all appearances — for Queen and Country. He is always watching his weight and what he eats. Sherlock deflects a matter of “national importance” by asking Mycroft: “How’s the diet?”
John: [Mycroft]’s texted you eight times. Must be important.
Sherlock: Then why didn’t he cancel his dental appointment?
Sherlock: Must be a root canal.
John: Look, he did say ‘national importance.’
Sherlock: How quaint.
John: What is?
Sherlock: You are. Queen and country.
— TGGWatson: Well, now you mention it, this level of consumption is incredibly injurious to your health. Your heart…
Holmes: No need to worry on that score, Watson . . . There’s only a large cavity where that organ should reside.
— TABJulian’s tragedy is that he accepts society’s judgement as both inevitable and final. Society’s standards are his own; rejected by others, he rejects his own existence rather than take the slide down the status ladder. Caroline, who had always loved him but comes to understand him only in death, concludes that ‘God help us all but he was right. It was time for him to die.’ All that remained for him was one horrible endless Saturday morning in the dentist’s chair.
— Donaldson
Naturalistic Determinism
The message from TFP is: “Every choice you ever made, every path you’ve ever taken, the man you are today…is your memory of Eurus.” This is in direct contrast to TAB’s message of “Nothing made me…I made me,” because Eurus is not about Sherlock. It’s about John — the man with trust issues who cannot talk about his past, his middle name, or his emotions in a direct way. According to John, everything about who he is, his family, the societal expectations put on him, circumstance, bad luck, etc. are all forces working against him his entire life leading to where he is now. He is accepting his fate and deciding it must be his time to die. This is exactly the point of Appointment in Samarra.
The reviews also reveal the kind of frustration suffered when reading mystery stories with loose ends. Where is the motive for this self-murder? Why does Julian English take his own life?. . . O’Hara supplies the answer through action and dialogue, not through intrusive commentary. Julian English’s death is made inevitable by the kind of world he lives in and its psychological effect upon him. As O’Hara wrote of the novel, “what I really mean when I say it’s true is that the psychological patterns were real.” — Donaldson
Naturally, the only parts of Series 4 that are real are “the psychological patterns.”
In Appointment in Samarra, the forces working against Julian English are 1) chance and circumstance, 2) societal environment, and 3) hereditary temperament.
I covered Series 4 parallels to #1 in “The Philosopher Antithesis”: John’s tendency to have bad luck. Julian similarly has terrible luck as will be evident throughout this section. It’s ironic that Julian smokes a cigarette brand called “lucky strikes.”
There was something awfully good and lucky for him in being guided out of the club and into the car and away, but something else had pulled him back. You did not really get away from whatever it was he was going back to, and whatever it was, he had to face it.
2) Societal environment — Julian English’s social status places expectations on him to be a war hero in every sense. His father is a doctor and an egotist. He belongs to a country club. He is the president of a Cadillac motorcar company, and yet a “social climber” Harry Reilly practically owns the company financially if not officially, because he is the one with money, not Julian. Everyone thinks his wife Caroline is a “swell girl.” His long-time friend Froggy Ogden gets into a fight with Julian and tells him he’s secretly always hated him. As Julian spirals into suicidal thoughts, everyone who greets him, he is convinced secretly hates him. His wife, who he loves, must hate him too.
All his friends hate him. . .I wrote an essay on suppressed hatred in close proximity based entirely on his friends.
3) Hereditary temperament — Julian’s nature is working against him, whether it’s literal or a self-fulfilling prophecy. His grandfather committed suicide. His father is convinced that Julian is naturally bad because of a shoplifting incident when Julian was a child. At the end of the book he believes the “suicide strain” had skipped a generation. Julian is rude, immature, and temperamental throughout the story. His sexuality and sexual conquests with women are the only thing he is confident about, but it too works against him in the end.
Faith: You’re my last hope.
Sherlock: Really? That’s bad luck, isn’t it? Goodnight. Go away.
Wiggins: I always ‘ave bad luck. It’s congenital.
Before Series 4, Louise Brealey was quoted at Sherlocked USA saying, “Someone snaps. Someone has had enough.” I could not help but recall that statement when I learned of the inciting incident in Appointment in Samarra. Julian is at the country club in the early hours of Christmas morning, listening to Harry Reilly tell an obnoxious story that everyone is laughing at. He can’t stand him and yet is extremely jealous of him, for many reasons, one being that he is “elaborately attentive” to Julian’s wife Caroline. He is a social climber but so rich, everyone loves him, and Julian is indebted to him — literally. In the introduction to the novel, Charlie McGrath writes, “There’s an emptiness in Julian, a sense that life has already offered him all there is.” He seems to have everything, but not the heroic glory, nor the financial or romantic security that he desires.
During the inciting incident, the prose reads like a fantasy. He hates Harry and would love nothing more than to shut him up but he can’t do it but oh it’d be so fun so satisfactory, but he can’t do it. He won’t. Julian’s inner voice is unreliable. We don’t know that what seemed to be a fantasy actually happened until the chapter ends with: “Julian English. He just threw a highball in Harry Reilly’s face!” Julian snaps and has had enough. This one outburst of pent up jealousy and resentment, marks the beginning of a series of events that are irreversible, leading to Julian’s tragic but psychologically “inevitable” suicide.
This is the first of three impulsive decisions that Julian makes which snowball into one another. The second is when Julian gets drunk and invites a woman out to his car. This woman turns out to be a gangster’s girlfriend. She and Julian do not have sex, but they are so drunk they fall asleep in the car leading everyone, including Julian’s wife, to assume that they did have sex. His reputation is dragged to hell and he flounders in an attempt to convince people of the truth. At this point Julian is contemplating suicide. He thinks deeply about God, premonitions, fate and most prominently — how jealous he is imagining Caroline and Harry together. While still at work he takes a pistol out of his drawer, contemplates using it and almost does. Caroline calls to threaten to leave him for good, and says he shouldn’t come home drunk or she’ll cancel their Christmas party.
The third major event is a fist fight with his friend Froggy that I mentioned earlier. Julian is rude, impatient, and frustrated. He’s deeply depressed, but now everyone is frustrated with him. His best friend apparently secretly hates him and so must everyone else. Then, he gets in his car and drives out of town. He recalls a time when he thought he “owned the road” and swerved around until he was arrested for drunk driving, until “something else had pulled him back. You did not really get away from whatever it was he was going back to, and whatever it was, he had to face it.” The car is the horse, in this version of the tale.
The final conversation with Caroline goes like this:
— “If you leave I’m going to call off the party and I’m going to stay here. Be reasonable, Julian. Tell me what happened.”
— “No. Come on home with me and I’ll tell you. Otherwise no. This is a pretty good time for you to stick by me.”
— “I can’t stick by you if you don’t tell me what for.”
— “Blind, without knowing, you could stick by me. That’s what you’d do if you were a real wife, but, what the hell.”
— “Where are you going? To get drunk I suppose.”
— “Very likely. Very likely.”
— “Julian, if you leave now it’s for good. Forever. I won’t ever come back to you, no matter what happens. I won’t ever sleep with you again or see you, not even see you.”
As you can see Caroline was his last hope, but it doesn’t end well for them, so he leaves. When he gets home, a woman comes to the house wanting to write about the party for her gossip column in the newspaper. Pathetically he makes an attempt at hitting on her, but she rejects him and leaves. Now he is seriously planning suicide, so he gets incredibly drunk.
He drank while walking and this demonstrated the inadequacy of the glass. He had a smart idea. He took the flowers out of a vase and poured the water out, and made himself the biggest highball he ever had seen.
He found he had two cigarettes burning, one in the ash tray on the floor, and the other getting stuck in the varnish on the edge of the phonograph. He half planned a lie to explain how the burn got there and then, for the first time, he knew it would not make any difference. He got to his feet and went to the stairs.
“Anybody in this house?” he called.
“Anybody in this house?”
“Any, body, in, this, house!” He shook his head. “Nope. Nobody in this house. You could wake the dead with that noise,” he said.
He’d rather see anyone but you. Anyone. — TST
I never had a friend. I had no one. — TFP
Similar to the way “I’m at the bottom of a pit and I’m still falling; I’m never climbing out” is parallel to John at the bottom of a well, these references in TLD are about John.
Then he climbs into the parked car in his garage, starts it, and is eventually killed by carbon-monoxide poisoning. This penultimate chapter from Julian’s point of view ends with him thinking about there being nothing more to do but wait. He had “three quick drinks and was on his fourth,” — people always give up after three — “when he lay back and slumped down in the seat. At 10:50, by the clock in the rear seat, he tried to get up. He had not the strength to help himself, and at ten minutes past eleven no one could have helped him, no one in the world.”
Fortunately deceased had seen fit to vent his rage and smash the clock in the front part of the car, which readily enabled the deputy coroner to fix the time of death at about eleven o’clock P.M., the night of December 26, year of Our Lord one thousand nine hundred thirty.
(so sorry about this: “four serial suicides and now a note. Oh, it’s Christmas!”)
Even at the eleventh hour it’s not too late, you know. . .Cars can be ordered, private jets commandeered.
— TSOT
Sherlock: If you increase the dosage four or five times…toxic shock should shut me down within about an hour.
Smith: Then I restore the settings. Everyone assumes it was a fault, or you just gave up the ghost.
A blog case, Murder at ‘the Orient Express’, echoes a lot of these motifs as well. Additionally, The Deadly Tealights, features a death very similar to Julian English’s, except while taking a bath (which John likes) not in a car. In that case the killer himself seeks out Sherlock to solve it, supposedly to “show off,” but perhaps just “desperate to get caught.”
The car and the plane, both serve to convey the message that John is, not just running away to but running away from…himself. His desire to hide from himself and his feelings, is driving him down to a darker place. He’s trapped in a plane he cannot land. I believe the final frame of TFP — a freeze frame — represents not just the stories being frozen in the past; John the author is frozen in a state of indecision. This is why, in my opinion, he cannot shoot himself. That is too decisive. He must create a scenario where a certain someone — if they love him enough and can figure it out — could save him, so he is leaving that decision up to someone else and waiting for the proper moment to flip the coin.
Do you ever look in the mirror and want to see someone else?
Self-Impersonation
Now that I have established the likely inspiration for the Driver in a Car as the “horse” or vehicle by which John is futilely fleeing his fate, we can more thoroughly explore its other and equally important symbolic purpose. If you recall, though Charlie did not commit suicide, subtextually we read it as such because of the other “drunk driver.” John is the driver and the victim. Yet, Charlie is already dead before it crashes. The disguise that hid him from the world for a momentary surprise, was what obscured his need for help — a car seat cover. That is sad enough, but it is twice as potent when you analyze what the car-as-disguise represents even further.
Masquerades
I found a lot of inspiration and insight from a lovely article by Wendy Doniger: “Self-Impersonation in World Literature.” It is free to read online if you would like. I was pleasantly surprised — since I found it by researching Appointment in Samarra — to open it and see what she decided to lead with:
A few notable quotes by Doniger:
“People in stories can’t seem to help masquerading as themselves.”
“The play within the play is a vehicle for jealousy and deception.”
“…(women changing into other women to seduce their own husbands).
‘How is it possible that he did not recognize his own wife?’”
Can’t even tell your girlfriends apart. — ASIB
Can’t even tell people’s faces apart. — TST
Amazing, the times a man doesn’t really look at your face.— TLD
Through the Looking-Glass, and What He Found There
“In our stories, this particular brand of fatalism argues that the hope of getting away from oneself is always doomed to failure.” — Doniger
Doniger argues that there are variants of stories with self-impersonation that challenge the fatalistic view of running away from yourself as you see in Appointment in Samarra, by spinning it in a positive light. Because if you keep running away, not from death but from yourself, to stop the villain — yourself — under that villainous mask is another mask and another and another and it is masks all the way down. They are the league of furies and “this is a war we must lose.” However, if John references Appointment in Samarra the novel — he believes his life goal of getting away from himself will doom him to suicide the more he runs away and the more he fails to wear a new mask.
Doniger would agree, wholeheartedly I think, with the quote “a disguise is always a self portrait.”
In Appointment in Samarra, the car is also the mask. The Buicks are the vehicle by which you can flaunt your social status and how you want people to see you. You are a masculine man who drives an Aston Martin like James Bond. Gender and sexuality are connected in the view of society, so for a man like John, masculinity and sexuality are especially tied together. For Julian English, it’s more about social status and gender expectation, but sexual performance has expectation as well. The novel’s opening chapter establishes all of this in association with cars. Additionally, it is a sex scene — an omen. The Englishes’ neighbors who are happily married, decide to both “take a chance” and have sex (they don’t want to have more kids) — on Christmas morning. Surely, someone is going to die…and they do. As soon as Julian throws his drink that morning he is, narratively, a dead man walking.
Irma, the neighbor, knows cars. She could hear the sound of a car passing by and immediately know who it belonged to:
Irma heard the sound of another loose cross-chain, fast when she first heard it, and then slow and finally stopping. The car was getting a new start, in low gear. Irma recognized it: Dr. Newton’s Buick coach.
The cars and the people who drive them are directly linked. They are one’s very identity.
When, at the last, Julian seeks to save himself by the only possible means for him of self-vindication, his sexual conquest, and fails with the visiting socialite reporter, he is truly finished. It is for this structural reason that O’Hara includes the controversial episode: Julian’s irrepressive sexuality is a sign not of his vulgarity, but vitality, and when it is circumstantially thwarted in his supreme crisis — his wife having left him now — he has turned the last corner of the last street of his Samarra.
— “O’Hara’s Appointment in Samarra: His First and Only Real Novel” by Jesse Bier
When Julian ends his life in his car — parked, engine running in the garage — it is a metaphor with two implications:
- He is no longer the driver. He is not in control of his public image. He’s the victim. He is no longer attempting to run away from his fate; he is giving up.
- The car had become the driver. It represented the façade — everything he wanted people to view him as: a man with money, a career, social status, masculinity, and virility. When the latter fails him, that is his doom.
The car/mask killed him as he killed himself.
The car is John’s “irrepressive sexuality” but also his very “vitality” which will end him in his race to escape himself. He tries to shove it away in a prison within a prison, but it will not be contained.
To silence his sexuality is to silence his ability to love and everything that makes him, him. Just like Julian’s mask/car killed him in a literal sense, and the way Charlie’s disguise (car seat cover) killed him — kept him from “coming out” or being discovered (this metaphor/mirror character really fits for Sherlock/the show too honestly) — John’s disguise will kill him. It will probably also maintain the lie, unless he can confess, which he refuses to do unless it is in death. Julian English’s wife never remarried and she looked back at her husband with this description:
He was drunk, but he was Julian, drunk or not, and that was more than anyone else was. That was what everyone else was not. He was like someone who had died in the war, some young officer in an overseas cap and a Sam Browne belt and one of those tunics that button up to the neck but you can’t see the buttons, and an aviator’s wings on the breast where the pocket ought to be, and polished high lace boots with a little mud on the soles, and a cigarette in one hand and his arm around an American in a French uniform. For her Julian had that gallantry that had nothing to do with fighting but was attitude and manner; a gesture with a cigarette in his hand, his whistling, his humming while he played solitaire or swung a golf club back and forth and back and forth.
She imagines him as he truly was, but with the imagery of the soldier that he never was. He had to die to become that soldier/hero to Caroline. Since John can only become who he truly is by killing off his “latest mask,” I feel obligated to say that while the Culverton mask is incredibly sad, it is the lie that covers up the truth. He may be going after him to stop and arrest him, but it is not himself he is stopping — it’s the lie he is telling himself. That is not him. It is ultimately when the story is over him stripping away the mask to reveal his true self, whether he realizes this or not. As Doniger put it, “the mask also tells the truth, and the confession does actually peel away one layer.” He (and the show by extension) must fail to wear the mask in order to reveal the truth underneath. The problem is that he feels he cannot confess first.
The Captain Self
John as the driver is the “Captain Self.” Whenever we see John as himself (played by Martin Freeman) throughout Series 4, this is his Captain Self. The governor of the prison he locked Eurus in, has been programmed, so she is taking over. So like with Culverton, Captain John Watson must sail to where that mask is and “kill it” but he cannot do it. He is stuck in isolation with a mask that he cannot take off, because it isn’t really a mask. Eurus is just as much John as the Captain Self is, but she is warped and psychotic due to his own self-perceptions. This is why she is the little girl who is the passenger on the plane, because both she and John are no longer in control of their fate.
“Me and Jim Moriarty, we got on like a house on fire. . .You knew he’d take his revenge. His revenge apparently is me.”
“Save my soul. Seek my room.”
“Every time I close my eyes, I’m on the plane. I’m lost, lost in the sky, and no one can hear me.”
“The driver is asleep” now. John is a passenger, a victim to circumstance and his inability to stop running away. He’s reaching the end of the road. He cannot land the “plane” himself, so he imagines a scenario in which Sherlock can still embrace even his “worst side” and be there for him, even if it is only as a friend or “brother.” He/Eurus stay locked up and silent forever, so the captain self can live the perfect façade in 221B, and the physical embodiment (albeit a darker, twisted version) of Eros — love and sex — will only be visited by Sherlock playing his violin, both of them separated by glass. The captain is foolish, but he’d really like Sherlock the pirate to show up Dread Pirate Roberts style to whisk him away to Sumatra, where he can avoid death and his true story may be told.
One word, Mr. Holmes, and it changed my world forever. Just one word. . . A name.
The Clue is in the Name
Discussion on “Janus Cars” has always centered around the pun on “anus ars” as it is very noticeable in the set design. However, Mark Gatiss pointed out in the episode commentary for TGG that this was not an intentional pun — rather a happy accident. The extent of its significance, though, has been relegated to that episode and joke unfairly and for far too long. It is mentioned enough in TGG and with greater seriousness which is consistent with other themes. The connection to cars alone gives it even more significance as I have stressed thus far.
In addition to what we see in Series 4, cars (and other vehicles) are used throughout the show to provide insight into John’s character and where he is headed. Just within Series 1 there are: Jeff Hope, his several victims, Ian Monkford, and Joe Harrison.
In TGG, Ian Monkford fakes his death by leaving behind a car with his blood splashed on the inside, no body. One might think this is foreshadowing Sherlock faking his death and not look beyond it. However, Ian Monkford was a Banker.
The car was hired yesterday morning by an Ian Monkford. Banker of some kind, city boy. Paid in cash. Told his wife he was going away on a business trip, but he never arrived.
If you’ve got any kind of a problem — money troubles, bad marriage, whatever — Janus Cars will help you disappear. Ian Monkford was up to his eyes in some kind of trouble — financial, at a guess; he’s a banker. Couldn’t see a way out. But if he were to vanish, if the car he hired was found abandoned with his blood all over the driver’s seat…
John “strapped for cash” Watson was also having financial trouble in The Blind Banker. The banker Sebastian is a foil for John and another banker Eddie Van Coon is also a John mirror. I will elaborate on that later, but for now suffice it say that John’s financial troubles link him to Ian Monkford.
TGG includes two important nuggets of characterization for John. He recognizes the name Golem as a “horror story.” The Golem is also a dark John mirror similar to Culverton, because “the Golem squeezes the life out of his victims with his bare hands.” Additionally, it is evident in Series 4 that John likes horror films. Given his knowledge of fairly obscure references, it is then especially notable that he also knew who the Roman god Janus was as soon as Sherlock brought it up.
Sherlock: Janus Cars. The clue’s in the name.
John: The god with two faces.
Time to choose a side, Dr. Watson.
John is the god with two faces or two “sides” to his sexuality as Mycroft points out, but there are other facts about this god that delight me. First, he is the god of beginnings and endings. The first month of the calendar year, January, is named after Janus. The fact that it’s also the month in which John and Sherlock meet, thrills me endlessly. Everything in Series 3 and 4 has pointed us back to the beginning (ASIP), so it is thematically consistent. Second and most importantly, not only is Janus the god with two faces, but Janus has a twin sister — Diana. Their better known Greek equivalents would be Apollo and Artemis, who are the twins of Greek mythology.
Diana is the goddess of the hunt, depicted with a bow and arrow. Is it a coincidence that Sherlock automatically thinks “Liberty in” would be: in death, but the hound drug happens to have been developed in Liberty, In…diana? Probably. Though she is often depicted hunting alongside a “hound” and deer, and Mark Gatiss did write both THOB and TGG for the Janus reference, so who knows.
From the moment of conception…how breathtakingly prescient
Secret Twins
This comment, “Secret Twins,” from TAB is not to be taken literally, but it should still be taken seriously. It is a joke within TAB, but a helpful clue for Series 4 and viewing the characters in the show. It’s significant that John also mentions Sherlock’s critique that it is “never twins” in TST. It’s not a coincidence that John has a sister not a brother, before making Sherlock’s “secret” brother his “secret sister.” Sherlock and Eurus are not secret “twins,” but this concept is mentioned for a reason.
Janus is the god with two faces, the god of beginnings and endings. He is the embodiment of the coexistence of opposites. Nothing alike but exactly the same.
You’re me…You’re me!
You…or me?
I’m you aren’t I?
We could interpret John and Sherlock as “secret” twin flames or soulmates, rather than actual twins. However, it’s “never” twins/twin flames, so John makes do with just siblings for now — “soldiers today,” brothers in arms if you will. Siblings are more often used throughout the show to signify John’s two faces or “sides” to his sexuality — John (closeted) and Harry (out). “Twins” more often refer to Sherlock and John being the same person. They will be represented together in one mirror character who informs us about both John and Sherlock in relation to each other.
In TST, we are introduced to equal but opposite words: ammo vs amo. One word, Amo, is pronounced with a slight difference and determines the opposite meaning. This is a variation on the concept of Janus Words. Eurus’ name can be cleverly pronounced differently to give us Eros.
Eros’ Roman equivalent is Cupid and Eros’ (“secret”/certainly less popular) brother is Anteros, the god of requited love and the avenger of the unrequited. There is an E vs C dichotomy throughout the show that some have picked up on — Elizabeth and Catherine — in relation to John (see appendix for examples). Eros and Cupid represent the same God, but as two faces: Roman and Greek. They were more heavy handed with E and C names, but there was another subtler (“secret”) connection between A-names and Sherlock. I found a description of the Anteros statue in Piccadilly that is quite apt: “Anteros was created as a response to Eros’s call.”
“Answer your phone, I’ve been calling you!” — The Blind Banker (Archer)
Sherlock: …why isn’t she answering her phone?
John: You never answer your phone.
Sherlock: Yes, but it’s me calling.
— TFP
Mary: Oh, hang on. I’m buzzing. Hello? Oh, hi, Beth! Yeah, yeah, don’t see why not.
John: Actually, if that’s Beth, it’s probably for me too. Hang on. He knows we don’t have a friend called Beth. He’s gonna figure out that it’s code.
— TSOT
Elizabeth or Alicia?
The E name of Eurus as John’s “secret” other side he has hidden away, and thinks is wrong, is fairly consistent with the use of Elizabeths. Catherine is the “good” side. In TST alone, the girl on the bus ‘E’ is named Elizabeth (as credited though not stated, but E still stands) and John initially wanted to name Rosie “Catherine.” Here is a post that goes into incredible detail listing variations on Catherines with links to more. The name crops up a lot, but one example is Kate from ASIB, Irene’s live-in PA. In TAB, Lady Carmichael is John’s supposed ‘good’ side vs the ‘bad’ side: Emilia. The bride is mostly supposed to be Mary, but Mary’s fake middle name is “Elizabeth” and they use the code-word Beth. John’s mirror in ASIP, a cabbie victim who is known to drink a lot is Beth Davenport. Elizabeth isn’t Mary’s real middle name, but this is still an association we make with her. It’s her disguise. John’s conflict is him vs Eros and vs Mary Elizabeth simultaneously in Series 4.
There is a link between Lady Elizabeth Smallwood and Mary (Elizabeth) in HLV, so that Sherlock assumes one instead of the other when they both use the same perfume. Mary is masquerading under a false identity and giving the name/“side” of Elizabeth a bad look. Additionally, Norbury is a mirror character, that parallels John and Mary in key ways, who steals the identity of Elizabeth Smallwood (Love) and frames her.
Codename: Love — “I haven’t done any of the things you’re accusing me of, not one. Not. One.”
It is no careless mistake that Lady Smallwood’s first name is changed in TLD to Alicia (Anteros) — the “secret twin.” When Lady Smallwood goes to see Mycroft, played by Mark Gatiss, we are given a scene that is entirely metafiction, finally revealing the purpose of the Alicia or Elizabeth “mistake” fans noticed in HLV. For context, this is the scene immediately before Eurus/Eros shoots John.
Mycroft: So, you’re off now? I won’t see you for a week?
Lady Smallwood: Just spending it at home…unless she calls.
Mycroft: The P.M.
The prime minister? or “Elizabeth”?
Lady Smallwood: Here.
Mycroft: What’s this?
Lady Smallwood: My number.
Mycroft: I already have your number.
Lady Smallwood: My private number.
Mycroft: Why would I need that?
Lady Smallwood: I don’t know. Maybe you’d like a drink some time.
Mycroft: Of what?
Lady Smallwood: Up to you. Call me.
Luckily for us, Mycroft/Gatiss takes her card — foreshadowing the choice of amo over ammo, eventually.
There is a dichotomy throughout this show of good vs bad, good pill vs bad pill, Elizabeth vs Catherine, Eros vs Cupid, and then Alicia provides an alternate path that our protagonists have yet to take. Stuck in moments of indecision, John will attempt suicide and leave it up to chance rather than choose — but Sherlock will need to make a crucially different choice.
In part 2, I will point out examples of important As as they relate to a variety of Drivers and Sherlock mirrors. There will also be a variety of dual mirror characters. James Sholto is the most obvious and believable, but there are even more examples that could have escaped our attention if we were too busy — trying to work out what it tells us about Sherlock — to notice the pattern. If the unexplored path is A — Anteros, then as their requited feelings go unacknowledged or condemned…and if one of them dies, then they both do. The Garridebs cliffhanger in TFP is exemplary of this concept.
My husband is three people.
The Three Watsons
For context, in the original story, Evans was the killer escaped from prison. Nathan was the only real Garrideb. John was Evans in disguise. Howard was a made up person. TFP changes this in subtle but telling ways. The killer, Evans, has become the victim, because this is a suicide story now. John Garrideb is now Alex. Lastly, unlike in canon, they are all brothers in this scenario.
Six months ago, a man called Evans was murdered; unsolved except by me. He was shot from a distance of three hundred metres with this rifle. Three suspects, all brothers. Nathan Garrideb, Alex Garrideb and Howard Garrideb. Which one pulled the trigger, Sherlock? Which one?
I believe Evans is Eurus/Eros in this scenario, because Eurus is John and John is the murderer and the victim. He’s going to kill himself over what he thinks is unrequited love. This is why all three Garridebs fall.
Mr. Archer on the count of three, shoot Dr. Watson
We can consider the details of this case in the context of archers: The Blind Archer/The Blind Banker.
Glasses, glasses. Nathan wears glasses…No cuts, no scarring. Not Nathan, then. Who’s next?
Now, Howard. Howard’s a lifelong drunk. Pallor of his skin, terminal gin blossoms on his red nose … and — terror notwithstanding — a bad case of the DTs. There’s no way he could have taken that shot from three hundred metres away.
So that leaves us with Alex. Indentations on the temples suggest he habitually wears glasses . . . He got his eyes fixed. His hands were steady. He pulled the trigger. He killed Evans.
I condemn Alex Garrideb.
Since Nathan wears glasses, if he were the killer he’d be the blind archer aka Blind Banker (John). He is the only real Garrideb in the original story. Howard is a drunk and couldn’t have done it, but he’s fictional anyway. He could have, but only because he is Nathan’s twin; they are the same person. Alex is the archer because he got his eyes fixed and can see well enough to shoot with accuracy. Anteros answered the call and shot John, but Sherlock and Eurus condemn him for it.
Eurus: Congratulations. You got the right one. Now, go through the door.
John: You dropped the other two. Why?
The other two (John and his brother) are killed because they both (John and Sherlock) condemned the wrong “archer.” They both think their love is unrequited. Also, John thinks even if it was requited, Sherlock would condemn Anteros for making him fall in love when he did not want to.
The name Alex is used for one of my favorite Sherlock mirrors, Alex Woodbridge, who is in the same episode as an Andrew West. Both AWs are killed by John mirrors.
Alex/Alicia are condemned for something they didn’t do, but Eros/John think otherwise. Therefore, Nathan and Howard (John and his two faces) are killed first. Then, Alex (Sherlock) is killed later. Sherlock will die, if John dies.
Romeo and Juliet style.
#sherlocklives means #johnwatsonlives.
#johnwatsondies means #sherlockdies.
This scenario is essentially how the real Garridebs story will almost play out. What Sherlock needs to realize is that Evans is the victim and the killer, and he was killed out of the belief in unrequited love. It is Eros/Elizabeth who should be condemned. Nathan/Howard and Alex did nothing wrong. Among the three options — people always give up after three — it’s actually the fourth and invisible option that should be chosen.
“Taking your own life.” Interesting expression. Taking it from who? Once it’s over, it’s not you who’ll miss it. Your own death is something that happens to everybody else.
The Patience Grenade
The last chapter of Appointment in Samarra (after Julian has killed himself) begins with a single line: “Our story never ends.”
Then we get an apt metaphor:
You pull the pin out of a hand grenade, and in a few seconds it explodes and men in a small area get killed and wounded. That makes bodies to be buried, hurt men to be treated. It makes widows and fatherless children and bereaved parents. It means pension machinery, and it makes for pacifism in some and for lasting hatred in others.
Your life is not your own. Keep your hands off it.
I estimate we have a minute left. Is a phone call possible?
The “grenade” metaphor here is saying what we already know instinctively. Our stories don’t end when we die. Our deaths will affect everyone around us. It’s pulling the pin out of a hand grenade in a parked car, in Piccadilly Circus, in an apartment building, or in an empty train car under parliament. Even if we are not wrapped in explosives, the emotional consequences of our deaths are real. It will still be disastrous and traumatic to the people closest to us.
The Van Buren Supernova
All throughout The Great Game, Sherlock must solve the cases that Moriarty sends his way. He’s having fun the whole time, “. . .but out there somewhere, some poor bastard’s covered in Semtex and is just waiting for you to solve the puzzle.” This is the episode that establishes the connection between literal explosives and Moriarty’s warning — he will burn the heart out of Sherlock. The cases in this episode are increasingly testing Sherlock’s emotional response, gauging when he gets close to cracking under pressure, and what his priorities are. Whose death would affect him the most?
Series 1 sets up Moriarty’s plan and TGG is him testing his hypothesis. The fourth pip, (because of course it’s the fourth) Sherlock has to solve why the painting is a fake. It is not enough to know that it simply is. The reason is the puzzle. He stumbles around it the whole time: Alex Woodbridge the security guard was an “amateur astronomer,” and was murdered because he knew why the painting was a fake —the Van Buren Supernova was a star that should not have exploded yet and therefore should not be in the painting. Series 4 is analogous to the painting and not just because they are “fake.” This is another reason to support the theory that the puzzle of Series 4 left for Sherlock the character to solve, will warn us of John’s impending death (the Van Buren Supernova aka the grenade).
Sherlock loves to look at the stars because they’re beautiful, but he doesn’t understand that the Earth goes around the Sun. This is so frustrating to John: “How can you not know that?” It isn’t until TAB that we hear again from Sherlock: “The obliquity of the ecliptic — I’m trying to understand it.” Sherlock subtextually does not understand his emotions in relation to John: Earth=Sherlock, Sun/Star=John, Mary (claire de la lune)=Moon. How can his whole world revolve around one person? The two academics submitted similar papers to the astronomical society, but one was better and the writer was killed for it — murderous jealousy by Mary towards Sherlock in HLV. The Star is John and TGG was the first episode in which this is established.
There has been speculation both of a self-inflicted Garridebs and a Valley of Fear Birdy Edwards style faked death. It is increasingly evident to me that John will fake (and/or publish a story of?) his death that is actually a suicide. The bright side is, in ASIP, Sherlock immediately knew the gun was a fake. In TGG, he also knew the painting was a fake — the question is why? I can see Sherlock still finding it difficult to convince himself it’s fake until he can prove it, but the point is that the real test will be if he can examine it as a rehearsal — not merely as a distraction. In TEH, which heavily foreshadows Series 5, Sherlock chides Anderson for leaving behind a false lead to lure him back to London. Anderson leaves a skeleton and a book: “How I did it” by Jack the Ripper. This is comically facile and shallow hence Sherlock describes it as a “distraction.” The key difference between this and what John may be doing is that John’s hypothetical fake death would be a warning that Sherlock needs to take seriously, but not too literally.
The patience aspect of the patience grenade is John considering himself a “dead man walking.” In TFP, that meant not moving or else it would detonate, so he has to lie in wait for as long as possible, until his hope runs out. He waits because a part of him still thinks Sherlock might be able to figure it out in time. The entirety of Series 4 tells me he’s not particularly optimistic. At best, Sherlock will figure it out in the eleventh hour — another reason for John to hold off as long as he can. Charlie was dead in the car for a week by the time the figurative hand grenade was pulled.
John is the ghost driver. Now the question is: what role does the ‘Driver in the Car’ play in Series 5? Part 2 of this meta will examine every instance of drivers in various modes of transport, along with ‘secret twins,’ throughout the show to glean meaning from the pattern that emerges.
Appendix
Acknowledgements
Special thanks, of course, to Kira and Erin for reading the early drafts and for all the lengthy chats. Thanks as well to Jules, Rachel, Amy, Nolwenn, devoursjohnlock, Char and many more for the inspiration and encouragement. All show transcript quotes come from Arianedevere. Source for majority of screencaps.
