Skip to main content

How could Baskerville Hall be described?

Arthur Conan Doyle provides the reader with many rich descriptions of Baskerville Hall. In Chapter Six, readers get their first look at the exterior of the residence, and it's a bleak one. After passing through a gate described as "…a maze of fantastic tracery in wrought iron, with weather-bitten pillars on either side, blotched with lichens, and surmounted by the boars’ heads," Watson and Sir Henry look down a long drive "to where the house glimmered like a ghost at the farther end."  


The whole front, says Watson, was draped in ivy, "with a patch clipped bare here and there where a window or a coat of arms broke through the dark veil." He goes on to describe the building in gloomy terms, evoking sensory imagery of something dark, cold, sharp, and ancient:



"From this central block rose the twin towers, ancient, crenellated, and pierced with many loopholes. To right and left of the turrets were more modern wings of black granite. A dull light shone through heavy mullioned windows, and from the high chimneys which rose from the steep, high-angled roof there sprang a single black column of smoke."



If the reader doesn't get the point, Sir Henry drives it home. He notes the looks of the place are "enough to scare any man," and he resolves to have electricity installed, so he can bathe the hall in artificial light.


Once the characters go inside, they encounter an interior that is "large, lofty, and heavily raftered with huge baulks of age-blackened oak." The language suggests solidity, but there is also a continuing sense of darkness and menace.


  • The decor is "dim and sombre in the subdued light of the central lamp."

  • The dining room is "a place of shadow and gloom," with a row of torches blazing on the wall, and a gallery of somber family portraits.

  • The bedrooms are more modern and brightly decorated, but sound carries, "so that in very dead of the night," notes Watson, "there came a sound to my ears, clear, resonant, and unmistakable" -- the sobs of a woman.

  • And, at later points in the book (for instance, Chapter 9), we read of creaking hallways and dark, gloomy corridors.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

A man has a garden measuring 84 meters by 56 meters. He divides it into the minimum number of square plots. What is the length of the square plots?

We wish to divide this man's garden into the minimum number of square plots possible. A square has all four sides with the same length.Our garden is a rectangle, so the answer is clearly not 1 square plot. If we choose the wrong length for our squares, we may end up with missing holes or we may not be able to fit our squares inside the garden. So we have 84 meters in one direction and 56 meters in the other direction. When we start dividing the garden in square plots, we are "filling" those lengths in their respective directions. At each direction, there must be an integer number of squares (otherwise, we get holes or we leave the garden), so that all the square plots fill up the garden nicely. Thus, our job here is to find the greatest common divisor of 84 and 56. For this, we prime factor both of them: `56 = 2*2*2*7` `84 = 2*2*3*7` We can see that the prime factors and multiplicities in common are `2*2*7 = 28` . This is the desired length of the square plots. If you wi...
Post a Comment
Read more

What warning does Chuchundra issue to Rikki?

Chuchundra, the sniveling, fearful muskrat who creeps around walls because he is too terrified to go into the center of a room, meets Rikki in the middle of the night. He insults Rikki by begging him not to kill him. He then insults him by suggesting that Nag might mistake Chuchundra for Rikki. He says, "Those who kill snakes get killed by snakes."  He issues this warning to Rikki not to help keep Rikki safe but as a way of explaining why Rikki's presence gives him, Chuchundra, more reason to fear.  Chuchundra starts to tell Rikki what Chua the rat told him--but breaks it off when he realizes he might be overheard by Nag. He says, "Nag is everywhere, Rikki-Tikki." Rikki threatens to bite Chuchundra to get him to talk. Even then, Chuchundra won't overtly reveal any information. But he does say, "Can't you hear, Rikki-Tikki?" This is enough of a clue for the clever mongoose. He listens carefully and can just make out the "faintest scratch-s...
Post a Comment
Read more