The Hound of the Baskervilles Analysis

Superstitions have been known to have an overall effect of putting fear and anxiety in the hearts of mankind, while science on the other hand has the ability to put these anxieties at ease with logical explanations. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is a British author who was able to keenly capture the conflicting sides of these two ideologies in his novel “The Hound of the Baskervilles”. In this novel, Doyle makes use of the character Sherlock Holmes to try and give logical explanations to a group of people who were otherwise tormented due to their belief in the supernatural. This paper will take a brief analysis of the novel, as it tries to highlight how these two ideologies of science and superstition try to cancel each other out. In order to properly understand Doyle’s thinking when he authored “The Hound of Baskervilles”, it is important to first of all have a look at his background.

People in the country all seem to believe in the curse of the Baskerville, and are terrified of it. Dr. Mortimer, who Holmes expects to be a man of science, also seems to have been caught up in the belief, something that a person like Holmes would find Ironical (Gale,20). The reader is introduced to the curse early on in the story, in chapter two, where Dr. Mortimer comes in and reads out a letter that is supposed to explain the curse to Holmes. During this period, the people used folklore and superstition to try and make sense of the things they could not explain, or found mysterious. Talks of witches, black dogs and black cats were a common thing in that society (Wagner, 194). Doyle made sure he used the myth of the black dog to create anxiety and suspense in the story as part of the crime behind the Moor’s troubles.

Doyle, however, also brings in Sherlock Holmes to show the side that believes in science to help solve the mystery. Holmes did not believe in the mystery and instead chooses to use his deductive methods to solve the crime (Doyle, 50). His suspicions turn out to be true in the end. Holmes set out to solve the mysteries behind the murders in the Baskerville family and in the process help bring some peace to the fearful hearts of the county people. He is able to win back the public’s faith in science by using his methods to unearth Stapleton as the perpetrator and man behind the hound’s wrath. The reader is made to understand, through Holmes help, how Stapleton was able to starve the hound making it the deadly creature that it was thus attacking people.

Stapleton also went on further and used chemicals that were meant to make the hound glow, therefore, making it look scary in the dark. Holmes’ ability to use facial recognition to identify a criminal is also a thing today, where technology has seen the invention of facial recognition software. All these are things that could have made Holmes’ work a bit easier were they present during his time. With such tools by his side, superstition would probably never have existed when Doyle wrote this book. Works Cited Gale, Cengage Learning.  A Study Guide for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's" The Hound of the Baskervilles".