The Adventures of the speckled band Essay Example for Free

The Adventures of the speckled band Essay I am going to compare the opening pages of two detective stories The Adventures of the speckled band by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Miss Marples Final cases by Agatha Christie. I am then going to find out what is the most convincing and why. In the beginning of the Speckled Band it starts off with Holmes sidekick, Dr Watson examining his case notes on examining my notes. He talks about the way that every one of the cases is unusual a large number merely strange. He then recollects on one specific story. He then sets the scene of when Sherlock is woken up by a woman. He then talks about Holmes then going down stairs to meet her and discover the situation that she is in. At the beginning of Miss Marples Final Cases it starts off just like an ordinary day. The Vicars wife comes into the church to do her flower arranging as usual. It was a cold day but also sunny as she did so the sun came out. Whilst inside the church she noticed something huddled on the chancel On the chancel steps was a huddled dark form. She then realised that it was a man. He then utters the word sanctuary twice. The similarities between the two beginnings are that they both start off in quite a normal way. This is seen in the way the Vicars wife is doing the ordinary thing of flower arranging arranged the blooms in their holders. Another way in which they are similar is that each of the extracts gives small hints of things like death fear and darkness. For example in the Adventures of the Speckled Band the woman says, it is fear, Mr Holmes, it is terror and in Miss Marples Final Cases Bunch says to herself, I dont want to die of cold. The differences between these two stories are that the Adventures of the Speckled Band is set in Victorian times whereas the other story is set more in the 1930s. You can tell this by the words used. For instanced in the Adventures of the Speckled Band it says Knocked up instead of woken up. Another difference between the stories is that the Agatha Christie novel is set in the countryside whereas the Arthur Conan Doyle novel is set closer to a city or town. In the Adventures of the Speckled Band the story is told through the eyes of Dr Watson who is Sherlock Holmes best friend. All of the events are also seen through the eyes of Dr Watson. In Miss Marples Final Cases the author tells the story. Again the author sees all of the events. In the first extract there are only three characters Dr Watson, Sherlock Holmes and a woman. Two people are mentioned but do not appear. Dr Roylott the death of Dr Grimesby Roylott and Mrs Hudson Mrs Hudson has had the good sense to light the fire. In the second extract there is the first character, which is the Vicars wife. Then there is the man on the chancel. What we realise about the characters is that Holmes believes in logic and is very observant for I observe you are shivering. I think that Dr Watson thinks that Holmes is very clever and shows a bit of jealousy because of it perhaps just a little resentment. The woman seems to be very agitated and afraid of something because of the way she shivers. In the second extract the Vicars wife seems to be quite a pleasant woman. She also seems to be slightly untidy because of the way she wears her hat more rakishly than it had done before. I think the Adventures of the Speckled Band is made interesting by the way you know that the woman is worried about something but you dont know what until you read on. I also think it is made interesting by the way Dr Watson says that all of Sherlock Holmes cases are unusual but none commonplace. So this tells you that this one is going to be just as unusual. I think that Miss Marples Final Cases is made interesting by the way it is just an ordinary day until one small thing happens. Also because of this one thing you want to find out what is going on and why it has happened. I noticed that there is a difference between the language used in each of these extracts. You can tell that the Adventures of the Speckled Band was written earlier because of the words and phrases used like a young lady has arrived in a considerable state of excitement. With quotes like this it makes it more difficult to understand. Whereas the Agatha Christie novel is a lot easier to understand because the words used are a lot more similar to the ones that we use today. I would have to say that I prefer the Miss Marples Final Cases. This is because I think that the way the story starts is very good for drawing you into the story. By having something out of the ordinary happen in an ordinary situation. Show preview only The above preview is unformatted text This student written piece of work is one of many that can be found in our GCSE Arthur Conan Doyle section.