The Final Problem
The Final Problem, the chapter which was famous because it was once regarded the closing curtain of the most popular novelistic detective ,Sherlock Holmes .As the feature of the series of Adventure of Sherlock Holmes ,this chapter was written in the sight of Dr. Watson ,who was a military doctor in The Afghanistan war and was sent back to Britain for injury .In the novel, Dr .Watson was Holmes' most cherished friend and Watson recorded Holmes' marvelous stories in various dramatic cases ,which had made the figure of Sherlock Holmes popular in both fictional and real world .And ,Sherlock Holmes, the hero of the novel ,was a character with wisdom, calm mind, a sense of justice, and some bad habits like smoking with his classic old pipe and sometimes injecting 7% concentration of cocaine solution. Besides ,his concepts was also limited by the society that he had prejudice towards women's intelligence and abilities and it wasn't changed until he met Irene Adler ,the most important, intelligent woman appeared in Holmes life.
What has been mentioned above are the basic background of The Final Problem and here are more details of this novelette. In the beginning, the novel was showed in a flashback ,in which the popular writer Dr. Watson was going to write down the last story between he and Holmes. In here, Conan Doyle created a heavy, sad atmosphere describing Dr .Watson's mood by the words like grief, which indicated the results of the story would end up unpleasantly. Then, with Dr. Watson's memory went, the amazing battle between Holmes and Moriarty began. To Watson's surprise ,Holmes showed up in his personal clinic in a pale and thin appearance after they had not connected with each other for a while .The first sentence Holmes said after he stepped in the clinic was whether he could close the window-shade. His unusually move suggested he was faced with a severe situation and he must deal with it cautiously. Out of Watson's expectation, Holmes admitted that he was afraid of something, something dangerous and horrible .However, Holmes lighted up his tobacco pipe calmly and then proposed that Watson and he should take a one-week trip in Europe, which seemed strange at that moment but actually just a part of his plan fighting against Moriarty. Exactly, afraid and exhausted though he looked like, a detailed plan had been formed in his talented mind. And as he expected, Watson was willing to follow him to countries in Europe. Though Watson accepted Holmes invitation, he still had a hundred doubts in his mind and what was following were Holmes' explanations and Moriarty came into stage. In Holmes' description, Moriarty was the most powerful criminal in London, whose intelligence was equal to him or even over him. Almost all of the crimes in London at that time was related to him more or less .But his horror actually came from his gifted skill to hide his track in every crime .Though he had great influence in London crime world, seldom people had heard of him, including Watson .To describe Moriarty's ability more specifically, Holmes called Moriarty the Napoleon in crime world. After expressing how elitist Moriarty was ,Holmes talked about their first face-to-face meeting. When Holmes finished his arrangement against Moriarty at that morning and was meditating on his chair, Moriarty suddenly walked in his accomodation,221B,Baker Street, with a loaded pistol in hand, which surprised Holmes a lot. After a round of battle in words ,Moriarty left a evident threat to Holmes that he would erase Holmes' life no matter what it took. Then he turned around and walked out the house in rage. Since their conversation, Holmes suffer all kinds of deadly incidents when he walked on the street, which was arranged by Moriarty obviously .That is why he hurried to close the window-shade when he entered Watson's clinic.
After telling Watson about Moriarty ,Holmes started his complicated plan to get rid of Moriarty' s plants .According to his plan ,Watson changed his transportation for three times and finally arrived at Victoria train station ,where they were supposed to meet. However ,when Watson got on the train and the train began to pull out, he still found no sign of Holmes ,who was probably in trouble .Watson became worried and a old missionary suddenly sat beside him. To his surprise, the strange missionary was exactly Holmes and Holmes disguised as a missionary to avoid Moriarty' s men successfully. From this passage, it could be seen that Holmes' plan was precise and confusing to Moriarty' s men and Moriarty was such a great criminal that Holmes had no choice but complicate his escaping move.
Though Holmes had made a extremely cautious plan, Moriarty still tracked him down in Meiringen, a small town in Switzerland. What happened next was depressing, Holmes managed to cheat Watson to rush back to their hotel to save a non-exist English woman and he fought against Moriarty at Reichenbach Fall .Finally, Holmes succeeded in killing Moriarty, one of the evilest criminal in British history, with the cost that he fell down Reichenbach Fall as well.
"It was a costly victory" ,Watson thought.
For me, it was a astonishing but impressive ending of a great detective's career. A great detective's true ability would not be seen without a great criminal like Moriarty.
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