For Wednesday: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: “The Man With the Twisted Lip” and “The Speckled Band.”

[NOTE: Because of the Snow Day, we're going to repeat this class on Wednesday. So if you didn't answer the questions yet, I'll give you another class to turn them in. Be sure to read these stories--we'll have a Comprehension Exam soon!] 

Group “B” should answer TWO of the following:

Q1: How is “The Speckled Band” a bit like Kipling’s earlier story, “The Mark of the Beast”? Why might this story be Doyle’s way of re-writing the idea of an Englishman who turns into a “beast” from his disregard of another culture?

Q2: Both stories play on Watson’s (and perhaps the reader’s) racial fears and biases in their cast of characters: gypsies, ‘cripples,’ and a Lascar (someone from East India). Why does Doyle make specific mention of them, and initial make us assume that these characters perpetrated the crimes?

Q3: “The Speckled Band” also references two Englishmen who were notorious in their time: Pritchard and Palmer, both doctors who used their skills to poison friends and family members. Why might it be significant that the criminal in this story is also a doctor, as well as a member of “one of the oldest Saxon families in England”?

Q4: At the end of “The Man With the Twisted Lip,” the exposed husband laments, “It was not the wife, it was the children…I would not have them ashamed of their father. My God! What an exposure!” Why is his shame so mortifying to him, and how does this story hint at several significant taboos in English society?