The Adventure of Connecting-- A Study in Scarlet, Chapters 1-5 Week 3

By Jarod

In A Study in Scarlet, Watson becomes a very relatable character almost immediately in the story. Someone left to his own devices on his pension, just trying to keep his life as least monotonous as possible. Doyle smartly makes Watson's situation less than desirable, and as he only as his pension to live on, not be able to work with his disability, he finds himself running out of money, and looking to get a roommate to save money on housing, as many people just older than ourselves are forced to do in order to scrape by. Also, with nothing else to entertain himself with, Watson decides to investigate Holmes, wanting to know more about his mysterious roommate. Watson acts as any man would in his situation, trying to slyly inquire into Holmes' field of study as he marvels at Holmes' extraordinary deductive skills.

Holmes also becomes a relatable Character in the story, as he attempts to humbly shrug off Watson's awe of his observations, as any person with extreme talent would, yet still smiles and feels good about himself when Watson is awestruck when he explains his seemingly random theories about the case.

Gregson and Lestrade also have a little competition with each other to out-solve the other, as many workers have with their coworkers, which encourages them to be pushed and find answers as soon as possible. This is shown by the passage "The little man's [Lestrade's] eyes sparkled as he spoke, and he was evidently in a state of suppressed exultation at having scored a point against his colleague." They also are both trying to impress Holmes, though they wouldn't admit it, as students try to impress their teacher when they say with such conviction what they believe the answer to be, though this makes Holmes simply see them as idiots.