CONTINUED
No Longer an Invention: Doyle’s Creation of Realistic Characters
by Naching Kassa
First, he forced his character to face the reality of the world he’d created. Often, the measure of reality can be found through the way it is experienced and how we are connected to it. To know what is real, we use our senses. We see, hear, taste, smell and touch. Hardcastle connects in the same way. He knows the cry he hears in the dark, the sight of the footmark in the mud and the sound of the tread in the cavern are real. Like Sherlock Holmes, he knows one must fit theory to fact, not fact to theory. When his theories fail, when he has eliminated the impossible, he realizes there is only one answer. The creature must exist.
But does it?
Doyle (and Ebenezer Scrooge) knew one’s senses can be fooled, that small things can affect them. One might say The Terror is a blot of mustard, or an underdone potato. It may be a trick of the light or the rushing of an underground river. What does one do when one cannot trust one’s own senses? One consults with others and learns whether they have experienced the same thing.
This is precisely what Hardcastle does. He knows much of our reality is based on perception shared with others. (An example of this is our own monetary system. Everyone must agree that a $20 bill is worth $20, or the system fails.) Hardcastle’s attempts at checking reality are mostly unsuccessful because those he speaks to have not experienced the evidence he possesses. Dr. Johnson hasn’t seen the creature nor its den, and he has no interest in investigating. He is rather like Lestrade, indifferent to the clues, seeing when he should be observing. Hardcastle comes to realize he is, in fact, utterly alone with only legends and fairy tales to support his view of reality. (After all, are legends not based upon small truths? Were dragons not dinosaurs?) Only later does he comprehend what Armitage revealed to him and the erroneous choices he has made.
When Hardcastle realizes only he can stop The Terror, and he must venture into its lair once more, the reader is fully invested in him. All his choices and his perceptions have led to this moment and for the reader, he is no longer Doyle’s invention. Hardcastle has agency and free will. It is he who decides the story, not the author.
We Sherlockians know this better than most. To us, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson truly lived. And, if Sherlock Holmes is real, and James Hardcastle is real, then so too is The Terror of Blue John Gap.
And we should be very much afraid.
WHO IS NACHING?
Naching T. Kassa is a wife, mother and writer. She is Director of Talent Relations at Crystal Lake Publishing and a member of Mystery Writers of America and Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Naching belongs to many Sherlock Holmes scions, including The Sound of the Baskervilles, The Crew of the Barque Lone Star and The Sherlock Holmes Society of London.