Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Barthes' "Functions" in the "Speckled Band"
An interesting connection that I made between the Barthes article and the Sherlock Holmes story has to do with the idea of the functional unit as proposed by Barthes. From what I understand, the "functional unit" refers to an idea within a narrative that includes the value of its connotation, rather than just the simple idea. The example that Barthes uses to describe this is on page 91 of the article, as he analyzes a segment from a James Bond novel "Bond picked up one of the four receivers." Barthes explains that four doesn't actually mean the number (4), rather it serves to demonstrate to the reader that the technology of having multiple phones is necessary to the operation of the Secret Service headquarters, proving its validity. The connection that I made to the "Adventure of the Speckled Band" is that Doyle makes it clear to the reader, on multiple occasions, that Dr. Roylott kept exotic pets, and Holmes and Watson even come in contact with a baboon as they make their way into the home late at night. Barthes would call theappearances of the exotic pets in the narrative "functions" because of the eventual direct relation they have to the characters and the story.
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7 comments:
The Doyle example, like the Bond example, also shares the quality that Barthes is pointing out that a functional unit often exists independent of its linguistic unit. The fact that Dr. Roylott had specifically a cheetah (the linguistic unit) would keep its significance as a unit, functionally speaking, if for example Holmes would have used the cheetah's speed to somehow foil Dr. Roylott. In the story as it is, the functional aspect of the cheetah, that being to signify that Dr. Roylott kept dangerous animals, would be just as well served if Dr. Roylott would have had a gorilla instead.
Barnes also discusses the types of fuctions: the cardinal and the catalyser. I would like to argue that the idea that the doctor likes to keep exotic animals is viewed as a catalyser because as the reader we know early on that the doctor likes exotic animals yet we do not know why. We only get the reason why through the cardinal function where we find that his love for exotic animals causes the consequence that he uses these animals to poison his daughter.
While Doyle did include the functional unit of the exotic animals as a definite clue to any mystery savvy reader, he also included several pieces of information as functional units that were meant to throw the reader off the scent. For instance, the gypsies have the connotation of being viewed as a generally untrustworthy group of people which lends suspicion to the idea that they were somehow involved in the murder. Dr. Roylott is expecting the blame to fall on the gypsies despite the well known accounts of his madness throughout the town.
In "The Adventure of the Speckled Band,", another functional unit is that Helen Stoner admits to Sherlock Holme's that her step father has a violent temper, so violent that he is considered the "terror of the village." This demonstrates to the reader that Dr. Roylott has a violent mean side. This also gives the reader some background information about her step father and makes him appear suspicious.
Sean, I think your point is very interesting regarding the attempt of the Doctor to put blame on the gypsies. You are correct in that it seems like the part about the gypsies was merely "thrown in" to get us thinking off the mark. This is where "function" can have very different, yet important goals within the narrative: that of foreshadowing or the complete opposite; clouding our vision of what to expect.
The mentioning of the exotic pets was a really important fact that appeared within the Sherlock Holmes work. It essentially was the "turning" point, the deciding clue when combined with the safe and the saucer from the doctor's room, which fully lead Sherlock to draw the connection to the poisonous snake and therefore anticipate it.
From what I understood at the bottom of page 90 is exactly what I think doug understood. I also do think that Barthes idea of a "functional unit" is not just a sentence or "simple idea" as doug stated its a degree or "level" of understanding. Its not only actions,scenes,paragraphs as it states at the bottom of page 90 there is much more to it.
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