Chapters 6 to 8 — The Sign of Four — AQA GCSE English Literature 8702
AQA GCSE English Literature · 8702
Chapters 6 to 8
The plot, part by part
What you need to know
Holmes's reading of the locked room, Athelney Jones's arrest of Thaddeus, the trail with Toby across south London to the river,
and the Baker Street Irregulars sent to find the Aurora.
Key quotations: 'when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth', 'You know my methods. Apply them', 'It's Mr. Sherlock Holmes, the theorist', 'The net begins to close upon him', 'a tranquil English home in the midst of the wild, dark business', 'This Agra treasure intervened like an impassable barrier between us', 'the savage instincts of his companion had broken out', 'the chief proof of man's real greatness lies in his perception of his own smallness', 'Toby has lost his character for infallibility', 'the unofficial force—the Baker Street irregulars', 'a fierce, morose, and intractable people'.
Structure: Holmes's deductions set against Jones's wrong arrest, and Toby's false trail to the creosote barrel as comedy and delay.
Context: the gazetteer's description of the Andaman Islanders as a Victorian stereotype, which the lesson questions.
