I will now compare the three stories and similarities and differences in his style in each of the three stories.
When Doyle is describing a character, he wastes little space and rather than describe their personality, he describes their physical appearance. This method of writing means that the reader knows what a character looks like while also deducing his/her character from that. The general rule that I have discovered about describing the characters is that Doyle notes the age, clothes and features of the person. Below is an example of Doyle describing a character.
He was quietly dressed in a suit of heather tweed, with a soft cap, which he had laid down upon my books. He was young not more than five and twenty, I should say, with a strong masculine face
In the quote above, the protagonist of “The Engineer s Thumb” is described. This method of description of a person s character aides in the building up of mystery in two ways. The first way is that it takes up less space so the author can focus on building up mystery and suspense. The second way is that the reader is not completely certain about the behavior of the character therefore the character actions are less predictable and more mysterious. This is evident in all three of the stories except The Beryl Coronet where Doyle describes the characters and the background information on Mary and Arthur. It was vital in that story to describe the characters, as Doyle was trying to emphasize on the differences between the two characters.
In each of the three stories, the protagonist of the story faces an important choice. The choice is normally one of the key elements of the story. In The Engineer s Thumb , it is Hatherley, the client who faces the choice. The choice is where the maid comes into the room and wars him of the danger and that he must go.
For the love of heaven, get away from here before it is too late.
He chooses to stay due to the fact that he was offered a large amount of money. In choosing wrongly, he brushed extremely close to death yet he supplies an exciting story to the reader. This choice supplies more suspense to the story because there is something much like dramatical irony where the reader knows that something terrible is going to happen to the main character. The character in the story denies this because he is blinded by his goal, which is money.
The choice faced in The Beryl Coronet is where Holder, the client, has to decide whether to let Arthur out for five minutes. He chooses to say, no. The reader later finds out that Arthur had wanted to get the beryls back. In this story, the protagonist chose wrongly because he assumes that it was Arthur s fault. If he had let Arthur go the story would not have been told.
The choice that is faced in the last story, Charles Augustus Milverton is an unusual one as it is faced by Holmes and Watson. The choice is whether to rob the house or to let evil prevail. They choose to rob the house. This choice is an unusual one because it is not a mistake since in the end, justice prevails. This could be because Holmes and Watson are the main characters in all of the stories and they always solve the crimes. If they chose to let the woman be blackmailed, there would be no happy ending which is my next point. All of the three choices in the stories help build up suspense because they are the fork in the road for the stories. Each character faces two options right or wrong. Doyle variates on what the character chooses and that makes his style individual and unique.
All of the short stories written by Doyle have a successful conclusion in some way that I have read. What makes the reader want to read on in these stories is because it is a happy ending because each ending is individual. In the engineers thumb, the happy ending is that the house was burnt down. In the beryl coronet, it is that they get the coronet back. In Charles Augustus Milverton the successful conclusion is that he is killed.
Each of the three short stories conforms to the short story genre by having a twist in them. These build up mystery because the reader does not know what the twist is going to be. The twist in The Engineer s Thumb , is that he gains experience and popularity from the publicity that following the case. The twist in The Beryl Coronet is that it was Mary, not Arthur who stole the coronet. The twist in Charles Augustus Milverton was that someone shot Charles Augustus Milverton when they were robbing him and they were the suspects.
In all of the short stories, the characters appear to be clear cut good and evil. Good examples of this are Sherlock Holmes and Charles Augustus Milverton. The reader believes this to be the final description and the people do not change. This image is shattered in the beryl coronet with Mary and Arthur thus making the reader feel uneasy of their knowledge of the characters personalities (also known as mystery)
In my opinion, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is a literary genius and his stories are works of art. I feel that his use of mystery and suspense in his stories was amazing and that his plots were unforgettable. The amount of knowledge I gained from reading his stories was immense. This man deserved his knighthood.