Alana BensonOctober 8th, 2014Journal Response

Doctor Watsons Education

Despite the fact that Doctor Watson spends the vast majority of his time with Sherlock Holmes, it still seems that little of Holmess genius or methodology has rubbed off on the doctors own mindset. In the beginning stories, it was evident that Doctor Watson consistently expressed sheer amazement and surprise at all of Holmess discoveries and unveilings. Granted, Holmes also performs these in such a theatrical way that perhaps if Doctor Watson was lead step by step through such processes, he would react quite differently. As the canon of the work progresses, however, Doctor Watson begins to pick up on Holmess methodsthough in almost every instance taking the evidence in the wrong vein. Again we are led to a dead end: we need Sherlock Holmes. Even if Doctor Watson was a little smarter, even if Holmes did in fact die and Doctor Watson completely took over his practice, it is evident that he still would not be able to cover, in any sense, the same intellectual field that his counterpart did.With that in mind, we are reminded of one of the first instances in which we saw Doctor Watson attempt to solve a puzzle of clues: the evidence left behind by Holmes at the falls in The Final Solution. He looks upon the cigarette case, the note, and the footprints, and surmises that there could be no other solution than Holmes had gone off of the cliff with Moriarty. True, that was what Conan Doyle had intended to happen, and that only later did he come up with an explanation that was feasible, but even still. By using Holmess methodology, he still couldnt solve the case correctly. The next evolution of this (in our reading order), is Doctor Watsons attempts to solve the case in The Hound of the Baskervilles by himselffor all intensive purposeshis internship in Sherlock 101. Here, readers get to see Doctor Watson standing on his own two feet, using what he believes to be a perfect rendering of Sherlockian theory, only to discover that his mentor had been watching over him the whole time. At first Doctor Watson is hurt by this, and defensive of his own work with the case. As he realizes, however, how off base he was in some of his deductions, he too comes to understand that there is a wide divide between his knowledge base and that of Holmes.Not only does he miss out on the procedures of Holmes, but he also constantly misunderstands Holmes himselfsomething that Doctor Watson should be quite the expert in at this point. In His Last Bow, Doctor Watson waits in vain to his ever-deepening disappointment[footnoteRef:1] for a sign that Holmes has gotten any sort of clue. Doctor Watson mentions in passing that Holmes had visited the British Museum, which, to any reader, is a clear indication of Sherlockian-style research. Holmes later admits that his journey had been to do some reading on Voodoo. Shockingly elementary. We just wish that Doctor Watson had realized it. [1: Holmes, 342]