The Hound of the Baskervilles.
To introduce my essay, I would like to say that this paper will be written in base of the oral material about Arthur Conan Doyle’s story „The Haund of the Baskervilles” that we have listened at our lessons. I have never read the full story, just some more additionnal essays and plot reviews about it. So, I can give you my unordinary analysis of this nice story that will contain of more information about new vocabulary, I will try to introduce main plotlines and heroes, oral comprehention difficulties, and of ocurse I will give my personal opinion and my attitude towards this storey.
The storey of Baskervilles hound is one of the Arthur Conan Doyle’s works that is about worldfamouse detective Sherlock Holmes and his assistant – friend Doctor Watson.
However in this Doyle’s work we nearly can’ t see our loved Mr. Sherlock Holes who is busy with one other case that seems him more important than this one. And his attitude towards this case about the Baskervilles curse is very cold because he says he does not believe in fairy tales. So he gives a task to his dear friend Doctor Watson to start looking into the case. Mr. Holmes appears only in the very end of the story to annonce the resolution of the mistic case.
You would ask why I make an accent on this? It is because of the readers of the story who are used to read about Mr.Holmes investigation step by step but in this storey we meet Holmse very little so- public suffers.
In the listening material we hear the storey told by Doctor Watson. He is the main person who looks into the case. However, Mr. Slerlock Holmes attitude towards him is not very good. He seems like more superior than his friend and he is stressing it. And it does not leave a good impression about the whole storey and mr. Holmes.
I have never been very strong at listening and it is such a problem for me to concentrate very long time while listening. But I tried very much to understand as much as possible. One thing that made listening very difficult was the new vocabulary. At the end after the analysis os this material when listening for the second and the third time it was more or less ok. But it is a new vocabulary what about is this paragraph. It was interesting to discover a lot of expressions to design Baskervilles Hall. For example it is called also „Baskervilles Estate”, „Baskervilles Lodge” or „Baskervilles Mansion”.
The other new vocabulary is related to the descriptions. I will talk abot descriptions a little bit later. For example, the main action of legend takes place in devon moore. Also „a buttler”, „nightshift” was new for me, this is the related vocabulary to the estate, it makes me think about aristocracy.
And now about the descriptions. The story is fullfilled with them. I would say that we find them more than needed .But on the other hand some of them are quite nice and show us the right situation in the storey and maybe they try to make the reader to tremble in terror. There are used a lot of stylistic devices to show it. For example they use an epythet and in the same time a hyperboly „ a dreadful sound of agony”, that makes us think abot danger. Also „an evil yellow face, a terrible animal face, all seamed and scored with vile passions…”, and so on. There are also a lot of intensifiers to make the listening (and maybe also a reading) more interesting and to make our imagination work.
I found something new for me also from medical and law vocabulary. This is the diagnisys of Sir Charles Mortimar’s death „died from heart failure”. And from the law lexis it is „deliberate murder” – tīša slepkavība.
So, the resolution of the case is that there was a deliberate murder, Mr. Jack Stapleton wanted to get the Baskervilles Hall, and he even had bought a huge dog and kept it in the Devon moor to frighten people living nearby and to save the legend. He had murdered old Sir Charles Mortimer and he wanted to kill also James Mortimer who was supposed to get the heritage.
This storey is fulfilled with mysterious events, a lot of colorful descriptions that enriches our vocabulary and makes work our imagination. But from the very beginning I was sure about the end of the storey, without reading it before. This kind of stories is not the ones of my favorites. They all are written by the same model, only the names and place is changed. But the main idea always is the same. I have no surprise and no use to read the same thing many times. Detective stories are for kind of people who have a lot of time or who are very boring persons. But it is my personal opinion.
To conclude, it is very useful to listen to the oral materials, and personally for me it causes a lot of difficulties. Maybe often it is because of low quality of the sound or sometimes because of my disorganization. But I like listening because I want to improve my English. However I have remarked that I have no problem with oral comprehension while speaking and listening to the people.