The Sherlock Effect

So, I can’t really explain quite why I see it this way, but I see this novel in the terms of the BBC show Sherlock. I’m going to do my best to explain this so that it can at least somewhat easily be understood by anyone. Now, if you’ve never seen the show, I would really suggest that you do because it is quite amazing! It follows Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s very famous and eclectic character Sherlock Holmes and his adventures as a genius who sees details that no one else does and solves crimes that no one else can.

In my reading of The Talented Mr. Ripley I saw Tom and immediately found myself comparing him back to Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock describes himself as a “high functioning sociopath” in one episode of the show. I see this as funny, because as you go through the series, you learn that Sherlock does have the capability of empathizing, he simply chooses not to most of the time. I view Sherlock as a man who actually feels, and yet does not seem as if he cares. Tom, well Tom might also be in the same boat . . . Sort of. Tom eventually commits a well thought out, calculated, yet spontaneous murder due to the fact that he feels so much. One might assume that a calculated murder of one’s best friend would have to come with either a surge of extreme feeling or an entire lack thereof. It would seem that committing murder means that Tom does not care at all for Dickie, however, the act was spurred by an extreme feeling of loss and dejection. I think that Sherlock is the same way, I think that he solves crimes not only because he has the intelligence and the cold calculation to do it, but also because he inherently cares. Maybe I’m not quite explaining this right and if so I’m sorry I don’t know how to quite articulate it so that someone who has never seen Sherlock can understand it.

I also read the novel in such a way that it felt like I was watching a single episode of Sherlock. But I’m not talking about just any episode of Sherlock. This novel brought me back to one particular episode of the show. SPOILER ALERT! If you are a fan of Sherlock, and have not finished the second season of the show, PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT READ THIS NEXT PART! When you read the end of the novel and Dickie is dead and the novel just sort of . . . ends, it’s as if Tom kills Dickie, the credits roll, and the audience is left thinking, “Wait! What? That’s it? That’s all there is?” There is this whole novel of internal action, of nothing really going on apart from hanging about Italy. Then, the action finally comes and as a reader you’re thinking, “HELL YEAH! There’s something happening! WOOHOO!” Then the climax (at the end of the novel no less) hits and you flip the page and there’s nothing left to read. As a reader you’re left wondering what on earth is going to happen next, and you aren’t given any answers. You are just left marveling. The end of the second season of Sherlock is the same way. The conflict between Moriarty and Sherlock comes to a climax—it comes to a do or die moment. As a viewer you spend the entire episode thinking that Sherlock is going to come out on top, because he is Sherlock after all and he is never out-witted. You wonder how Moriarty’s game is going to come to an end, how exactly Sherlock will solve the puzzle set before him. Then you see Sherlock and Moriarty duking it out on the top of a building. You think to yourself, “This is it, this is where Sherlock goes in for the kill, takes the victory!” And then, you are shocked—wholly and utterly shocked—when you see Sherlock step off of the building and fall to his untimely death. Watson runs up to his broken and bleeding body, and the episode, ends with a scene of Sherlock’s grave stone. As a viewer, at this point, you are FREAKING OUT! Thoughts are almost non-existent as you attempt to grasp the idea that Sherlock lost, that Sherlock is dead! You basically have that same feeling as with The Talented Mr. Ripley, “Wait! What? That’s it? That’s all there is?”