Page 3 - Microsoft Word - 8.2 class-6 Ch-8 hound of baskervilles ln

Theme of the story(To be written in the Eng CW Notebook)

Natural and supernatural; truth and fantasy

As soon as Dr. Mortimer arrives to unveil the mysterious curse of the

Baskervilles, Hound wrestles with questions of natural and supernatural occurrences.

The doctor himself decides that the marauding hound in question is a supernatural

beast, and all he wants to ask Sherlock Holmes is what to do with the next of kin.

From Holmes' point of view, every set of clues points toward a logical, real- world

solution. Considering the supernatural explanation, Holmes decides to consider all other

options before falling back on that one. Sherlock Holmes personifies the intellectual's

faith in logic, and on examining facts to find the answers.

In this sense, the story takes on the Gothic tradition, a brand of storytelling that highlights

the bizarre and unexplained. Doyles' mysterious hound, an ancient family curse, even
the ominous Baskerville Hall all set up a Gothic- style mystery that, in the end, will fall

victim to Holmes' powerful logic.

Doyle's own faith in spiritualism, a doctrine of life after death and psychic powers, might

at first seem to contradict a Sherlockian belief in logical solutions and real world
answers. Holmes is probably based more on Doyle's scientific training than his belief

system. But the struggle for understanding, the search for a coherent conception of the

world we live in, links the spiritualist Doyle with his fictional counterpart. Throughout the

novel, Holmes is able to come up with far-flung if ultimately true accounts of the world

around him, much as his author strove for understanding in fiction and in fact.

Classism and hierarchy

Hound's focus on the natural and supernatural spills over into other thematic territory—

the rigid classism of Doyle's milieu. Well-to-do intellectual that he was, Doyle translated

many of the assumptions of turn-of- the-century English society into his fiction. The

natural and supernatural is one example.