Sherlock Holmes as Necessary Madman: The Plot Thickens

Sherlock Holmes: Master of deduction or self destructive drug addict? Perhaps Conan Doyle's infamous sleuth owes his phenomenal powers of detection to his own personality flaws that seem to balance his character over a threshold of insanity during his crime solving sprees. While the character of Holmes could be profiled as a unique genius with an admirable work ethic and profound amount of knowledge in an abundant array of relevant subjects to his detective work, a more thorough psychoanalysis might yield that he is masochistic, depressed, obsessive compulsive, and a junkie. Why is Doyle's prototypical detective figure designed in such an unbalanced way? What does the seemingly paradoxical personality of Holmes add to the visual politics that are so prevalent in detective fiction? How do Holmes' weaknesses and derangements compliment and elevate him in an arena of ratiocination and how does he compare to other models of the detective?

It is clear that along with Holmes's astonishing detection powers, dangerous and creepy eccentricities also compose his character to the point where Watson (eventually) accepts them as routine behavior for the Sherlock. Should the reader expect this from a man who Dr. Watson's physiognomic analysis deemed to posses "an air of alertness and decision," and named him a "man of determination" (8)? While Holmes may be revered for his detection ability (and not his plethora of mental illnesses), Doyle makes it clear that "Holmes was a man, however, who when he had an unsolved problem upon his mind, would go for days, even for a week without rest, turning it over, rearranging his facts, looking at it from every point of view" (80). Holmes' obsessive compulsive disorder assists him when solving crimes, but also offers him as a lunatic to the reader as he has not only "made a special study of cigar ashes- in fact, [he] has written a monograph upon the subject" (24), but he purposely tries to unlearn the alignment of the solar system so that his mind has more space devoted to crime solving (9). This paradoxical logic in Holmes' character is what allows him to deduce at the level at which he does, but Doyle makes it clear that he pays for it with his sanity. The reader follows Holmes as he assumes different identities, smokes an ounce of tobacco in one setting, and throws smoke bombs into people's homes. To call Holmes devoted would be a serious understatement and in a way, Doyle has made consuming obsession a requirement for super-sleuths. Had Holmes' obsession been decreased by a single degree, he surely would have met with defeat on all occasions.

Not only is Holmes an obsessive compulsive insomniac, but he has intense depression issues. He may even be schizophrenic and is definitely masochistic. As we have explored the rigorous nature of Holmes' work ethic, we find evidence that he is at least bipolar. Watson observes him breaking suddenly from work as "a reaction would seize him, and for days on end he would lie upon the sofa in the sitting room, hardly uttering a word or moving a muscle from morning to night" all the while exhibiting "a dreamy, vacant expression in his eyes" (8). Here, Doyle gives us a completely new character, with a new personality altogether, quite contrasting the ash-analyzing and hard working Holmes. When he is defeated by Irene Adler, the photograph of her that he seizes seems to personify his masochistic tendencies. It is not difficult for the reader to image the photo in Holmes' study somewhere where he can stare at it during his long stretches on the sofa, absorbed in self-loathing, preparing to work himself into a drug induced fit over 'the woman.' Weather or not these slumps in Holmes' character can be attributed to his "cocaine injections" (78) is debatable, but only helps to add to the complexity and verisimilitude of the deranged bohemian; Doyle designs Holmes as such a weak, depressed character to make the reader believe in him. With an important part of Holmes' personality being that he lays around for days in a row, feeling depressed and doing drugs, he evolves from a caricature into a three dimensional person; If Holmes were to exist as a flawless, smiling, hero, he would cease to be interesting and become nothing more than a cliché sandwiched between happy endings and solved cases. This is also articulated as Doyle gives the reader Holmes' defeat in "A Scandal in Bohemia." This story has several parallels to Edgar Allan Poe's "The Purloined Letter" in that Holmes, like Dupin, is commissioned to protect a party's political interests by reclaiming information that an individual could use as blackmail. Both characters assume disguises, commission actors, and succeed in locating the articles in question, and yet through Holmes' defeat, Doyle is able to generate an element of realism absent from Poe's tale. Dupin's constant victories reduce him to a character barely complex enough to star in a children's story as the reader will begin every Dupin story wondering how he will outwit his adversaries and emerge mechanically triumphant. The necessary suspense that detective fiction requires is lost here, as the reader will never wonder if Dupin will fall victim to a cocaine binge or be outsmarted by a foe - his impressive ability to deduce are the story's only support. Even worse could be said for George Thompson's 'detective' Frank Sydney, as coincidence after coincidence propels him to the tale's formula storybook ending. True that Thompson offers Frank as a likeable gentleman, benevolent, and in many ways clever, but the clockwork rhythm of his accidental victories seem barely remedied by any other part of the story, which eventually grays as it grows even more simple; we will never see Frank severely depressed or analyzing the cellular structure of hemoglobin like Holmes, but rather, slipping and falling into a marriage with the tale's only (seemingly) virtuous character. With Doyle being quite willing to defeat Holmes and make the nature of his character (and thus the velocity of the stories he stars in) unpredictable, he achieves what Poe and Thompson could not with their attempts and creates an appealing, paradoxical man who would, quite possibly, be a horrible detective if he were prescribed Prozac and admitted into rehab.