Detective Fiction/ Popular Literature
The Hound of the Baskervilles
It is while dealing with comic modes of fiction that critic Northrop Frye makes a reference to
the literary genre of detective fiction. He holds the conviction that the beginning of the
detective fiction is the result of the intensification of low mimetic comic mode which is an
attempt to present the things with a high realistic tone. It is out of this conviction that Frye
states in Anatomy of Criticism:
Detective fiction begins as an attempt to describe life exactly as it is, and ends,
by the very logic of that attempt, in pure irony.
In short, detective fiction belongs to the category of ironic comedy and proposes that the
inevitable element in the ironic comedy is the presence of a scapegoat image. He used the
word pharmakos to indicate this figure. Frye says:
In studying the ironic comedy we must start with the theme of driving out the
pharmakos from the point of view of society.
Since ironic comedy depicts the actual life of humans in a more realistic fashion, it touches
the human world of violence and brutality. In such an ironic world of comedy, there are the
susceptible victims on whom the pain is being inflicted and the pharmakos is responsible for
the victim’s pain. The comic end of ironic comedy is the driving out of pharmakos from the
society and the restoration of the society into its former desirable status. In the detective
fiction, this expulsion of pharmakos is accomplished by a man-hunter.
In the Sherlock Homes series of Arthur Conan Doyle, the reader can easily note that they
all follow the same structure of the ironic comedy figure. In the four novels, the man-hunter
image is figured in the character of Sherlock Holmes who in A Study of the Scarlett declares:
I am one of the hounds and not the wolf…
In The Hound of the Baskervilles the invitation to involve himself in the case is made by
James Mortimer, the family doctor and well-wisher of the victimized family. Here too, there is
the presence of a letter addressed to Sir Henry Baskerville, which has been taken to Holmes by
Dr. Mortimer. The letter contains the following sentence:
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Detective Fiction/ Popular Literature
As you value your life or your reason keep away from the moor.
This letter which indicates an impending threat also points to the existence of the source of the
very threat. It is this letter and the request of Sir Henry Baskerville and Dr. Mortimer that calls
Holmes upon to engage himself with the case.
In The Hound of the Baskervilles, the first description of Dr. Mortimer about the crime
ends up with his attempt to trace the footsteps in the plot. It is following the footsteps of Mr.
Charles Baskervilles, he reaches the dead body of Charles. He also speaks of the change in the
shape of the footprints after the Moorgate and also the presence of some weird footprints a
few distances away from the body. He recognizes it as the footprint of a huge hound. The
conversation between Dr. Mortimer and Holmes develops as follows:
. . . I followed the footsteps down the yew alley, I saw the spot at
moor-gate where he seemed to have waited…
Footprints?
Footprints?...
Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound.
Holmes gives the explanation for the change in the shape of footprints that Mortimer
considered as the mark of a man walking into tiptoe. Denying Mortimer’s assumptions Holmes
says that the change of the shape points to the fact that the victim was running to save his life.
Holmes explains in the novel:
He was running—Watson running desperately, running for his life, running until
he burst his heart and fell dead upon his face.
Thus to conclude, there is no final interview with the criminal in this novel. Instead,
Holmes’s assumptions are certified by the accomplices of the criminal, whom he interviews. He
gets the whole narrative of the past life of Mr. Stapleton, who really comes in the line of
Baskervilles as the son of Rodger Baskerville, from Mrs. Stapleton. It is she who leads Holmes to
the place where the hound was secretly kept.
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The word pharmakos is a Greek word which means a scapegoat or victim.
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