Comparative Literary Analysis: A Sign Of The Four By Arthur Conan Doyle

Comparative Literary Analysis The Text A study In Scarlet and the text A Sign of the Four by Arthur Conan Doyle deal with the main idea of suspense. Both books are built upon the basis of anticipation and do a great job keeping the reader guessing to what has to come. The three primary methods of creating suspense used by the author are foreshadowing,characterization, and imagery. This paper will show that the author creates suspense by utilizing foreshadowing,characterization, and imagery. Arthur Conan Doyle creates both suspense and mystery in his book, A Study In Scarlet as well as his second book A Sign of the Four. He does this by foreshadowing, and providing hints of future events in the plot. In A Study In Scarlet he vaguely describes the details, just enough to intrigue you, but doesn't reveal them until much later in the story. "There had been no robbery, nor is there any evidence as to how the man met his death. There are marks of blood in the room, but there is no wound upon his person.”(45) These contradictions in the crime scene pique our interest and create both tension and uncertainty. In A Sign of the Four Doyle uses …show more content…
This creates suspense by describing something in sensory terms without explaining what it actually is. In A Sign of the Four he he uses this, and the reader enjoys the experience of looking at the evidence and trying to figure out what the writer is saying. “His name, I have every reason to believe, is Jonathan Small. He is a poorly educated man, small, active, with his right leg off, and wearing a wooden stump which is worn away on the inner side…He is a middle-aged man, much sunburned, and has been a convict.”(21) This is a perfect example of the ever-popular “Holmes description”, Holmes paints a vivid and brilliantly detailed picture of the murderer, deduced from the most common objects found at the scene of the