What makes Sherlock Holmes a timeless character ?
A unique personnality
Sherlock Holmes’s character appeared in 1887 in the novel “A Study in Scarlet” written by Arthur Conan Doyle. Sherlock Holmes is presented as a British consulting detective living in London in the now famous address 221B Baker Street with his roommate, the doctor John Watson. Sherlock quickly becomes popular with the readers. Nowadays Sherlock Holmes is still a famous, successful and beloved character who has crossed centuries without losing his popularity. We will explain in this article why Sherlock Holmes is an amazing and timeless character.
Sherlock Holmes is famous for his unique personality, his peculiar mannerisms and his astonishing deductive skills. Besides the book’s brilliant writing, it is thanks to this protagonist’s originality and his equally well-written archenemy, Moriarty, that Sir A.C. Doyle’s novel has become so distinguishable from other detective stories. Sherlock is an investigator like no other that captivates the audience and all of his personality traits that make him stand out, can be narrowed down to five main aspects.
One of these would be his exceptional intelligence. Sherlock’s knowledge and curiosity towards chemistry leads him to be a person who often does research based on experiments, observations and deductions. He also has a terrific memory that is not only photographic but also eerily well organized. Obviously, this is very important in his line of work and often tends to be crucial when solving cases. Since the very first book, it becomes clear that Sherlock is a capable person who constantly seeks for ways to challenge his knowledge and his abilities. In other words, he always takes the most complicated cases since only they would entertain him enough to be worth his while.
This leads to his extraordinary logical thinking. Sherlock is an extremely observant person. He notices even the most trifling details and his ability to interpret those clues in order to deduce personal information about the people around him are mostly flawlessly correct. Such logical thinking and the process by which he notices things leave the readers in awe at what he’s capable of learning just by seeing a person. On the other hand, his scientific mind leads him to have a rather eccentric lifestyle. He is portrayed as a sociopath since he appears to be oblivious to the feelings of those around him, he is rather arrogant and he isn’t fazed in the slightest about keeping human body parts in his fridge. These elements explain why he has few friends and even fewer close ones.
However, despite following this character through numerous novels, many movie adaptations and witnessing time after time again impressive displays of knowledge from his part, the readers will find that the character is nevertheless surrounded by a veil of mystery and elusiveness. While we slowly start to understand his personality and get accustomed to it, not much about his past is revealed during a long period of time. Sherlock isn’t easily inclined to share details about his family and his past memories. The readers only ever get to see the character evolving in the present since that is what the novel’s theme revolves around ; the solving of mind bending cases by a brilliant consulting detective.
Hence, this mysterious persona combined with his paranormal mental skills display a character out of the ordinary belonging in the world of fiction. The tales of how he solves murders therefore entail a particular atmosphere of discovery and wonder. As the demonstrations get more and more impressive, they seem almost magical. Even impossibly complicated mysteries that remain unresolved despite our best efforts would be solved by Sherlock as if it were all a children’s game. As he exults in the thrill of the chase, he’s here for the fun of it and because it’s what he’s good at. Meanwhile, he’s so talented at it that his stories sound unreal and adhere more to fantasy.
Finally, probably one of his most important features would be that sooner or later, he always gets to the bottom of every single case he undertakes. Each case he’s confronted with seems as ambiguous as the previous one yet he always has a brilliant trick up his sleeve. It’s rather easy to get lured into a comforting sense of safety in which we’re sure everything will end up just fine because as we follow his adventures, we learn to trust the character’s intelligence, skills and reliability. This allows us to understand Sherlocks point of view since the whole plot is less centered around whether the detective will win but more around the journey and the company with which he’ll succeed. This makes the chase feel like a game and this feeling is echoed by Sherlock’s iconic phrase in the TV series starring Benedict Cumberbatch : “The game is on”.
A timeless character
The main reason for the longevity of Sherlock Holmes lies in his brilliant ability to adapt to different eras and audiences. Far from remaining stuck in outdated Victorian tales, this character has managed to cross the decades by renewing himself without ever losing what makes him a unique and striking character.
Indeed, Sherlock Holmes survived the ages thanks to many adaptations that reinvent his universe while keeping his spirit. From the first film adaptations through countless book versions to the contemporary TV series, Sherlock Holmes has established himself as a key figure in popular culture, whatever the era.
Amongst the most striking adaptations is the BBC series “Sherlock” (2010-2017) with the wonderful, amazing and good-looking Benedict Cumberbatch, who brilliantly portrays the famous detective in 21st century London. The use of the modern technologies such as smartphones and Internet shows a character as rational as always but fitting in his time. This series revisits in a modern London the investigations written by Arthur Conan Doyle as “A Study in Scarlet” that become “A Study in pink” and identically for many other episodes. Likewise the American series “Elementary” offers another modern adaptation, this time in New York and with Watson’s character turned into a woman and played by Lucy Liu.
Our mythic character has also been adapted in cinema mostly in the films directed by Guy Richie in which Robert Downey Junior plays an eccentric, dynamic and sportive Sherlock, which contrasts with the traditional representations. This adaptation is innovative too and addresses a modern audience while respecting the Victorian time-frame of Conan Doyle’s books. Those films are indeed aimed at a younger audience and offer a lot of action scenes without decreasing the intelligence of the detective.
Finally, the famous detective Sherlock Holmes has also inspired numerous video games, spin-off novels, comic books and even manga, proving his ability to fit into very different media and cultures.
Sherlock Holmes has a unique ability: the ability to adapt to any era without ever losing his identity. Whether in the foggy Victorian London of the original stories or in the hyperconnected metropolis of the 21st century, Holmes remains instantly recognisable and retains his deductive mind, his taste for enigmas and his singular character.
This power of adaptation is based on the very elasticity of the character: Holmes is not fixed in a precise historical context. His extraordinary intelligence, asocial temperament and rigorous methods are independent of time and place. Each era can therefore shape ‘its’ Sherlock, infusing him with its own codes and its own preoccupations.
As a result, Holmes becomes a timeless figure, always familiar but never exactly the same. In the BBC’s “Sherlock”, he is a hyper-connected detective; in “Elementary”, a recovering drug addict; in Guy Ritchie’s films, a daring adventurer. Each reinterpretation strengthens the legend, proving that Sherlock Holmes is not just a character in a novel, but a veritable cultural myth, capable of being reborn time and again to adapt to today’s world.
Conclusion
All these elements explain how Sherlock Holmes has ascended to fame and has transcended through the centuries. Through this article we explained how his unique personnality made him a timeless character and inspired countless adaptations. Nowadays, he’s the most famous detective reference, a testimony of the brilliance of Arthur Conan Doyle and a masterpiece of english culture that has been adapted into all sorts of films, books and even games around the world.