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Carolina Rojas Professor Lynda Haas Writing 37 2 March 2014 Symptoms Similar pieces of literature are often grouped into categories called genres. Each different genre has some recurring aspects which have come to be expected; these are called genre conventions. Some common conventions of the mystery/detective genre according to the Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories are that there must be a detective, there crime must be a major crime, the mystery must be solved using logic, the culprit must not be the detective himself or an unknown character, and the motive should be personal. Another central genre convention that began with Conan Doyles Sherlock Holmes stories is that All clues must be plainly stated and described as they are found by the detective so that the reader has a chance to take part in solving the mystery (Van Dine). This genre convention is still used in many interpretations of Sherlock Holmes, for example in BBCs Sherlock, the clues are labeled in white text that appear when the camera focuses on various objects in the crime scene. Another version of Conan Doyles stories is House M.D., a television show set in a 21st Century Hospital in New Jersey, California. In this modern-day take on the original Sherlock Holmes stories, the main character, Gregory House is a doctor who works with a team to diagnose and treat patients. The genre convention of revealing the evidence to the audience is updated for its 21st century audience by stating all the symptoms instead of clues and by presenting them through visual and auditory means instead of through descriptive language.

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An episode where the convention is clearly visible is Season 1 Episode 8: Poison Of House M.D. in which a patient comes in after fainting at school. The episode begins at the hospital where one of the other doctors is walking with Dr. House and telling him about the patient and his symptoms; The kid was just taking his AP Calculus exam when all of a sudden he got nauseous and disorientedSevere bradycardia, heart rate's down to 48 and falling fastHis CAT scan was clean. There's no sign of infection. It's not diabetes. (Poison). Then it cuts to an office where House is holding a marker in his hand, listing all the known symptoms on a clear board while his team watches. The camera is first looking through the board and we see the words as well as Houses serious expression as he scribbles them. Then the camera pans over to the other side of the board and we can hear the squeak of the marker. While the doctors confer and make some inferences as to what the diagnosis could be, the camera keeps switching to different angles, most of which, are through the board. This scene really underlines the importance of the symptoms; the sound of the marker on the board focuses the viewers attention on the source of the sound, the list of symptoms appears in the shot several times, and the dialogue between the characters is centered on the symptoms. Similarly, In Arthur Conan Doyles The Sign of the Four, a comparable emphasis is placed on the clues. In this story, Sherlock Holmes and Watson are investigating the source of a Mysterious letter and it leads them to a more serious case involving a treasure and multiple deaths. The most recent death is Bartholomew Sholto who is found dead in his room. As they first stumble upon the crime scene, Watson describes the setting; it is a room filled with chemicals, various bottles, test tubes, and Bunsen burners. A set of steps stood at one side of the room, in the midst of a litter of lath and plaster, and above them there was an opening in the ceiling large enough for a man to pass through. At the foot of the steps a long coil of rope was

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thrown carelessly together. The dead man is seated in a chair and beside him a note that reads The Sign of the Four. Right away, through the description of the room the audience learns of some possible clues like the opening in the ceiling and the rope. When they are left alone in the room, Holmes thinks out loud as he investigates, "Window is snibbed on the inner side. Framework is solid. No hinges at the side. Let us open it. No water-pipe near. Roof quite out of reach. Yet a man has mounted by the window. It rained a little last night. Here is the print of a foot in mould upon the sill. And here is a circular muddy mark, and here again upon the floor, and here again by the table. (TSOTF 36). Holmes gives more detailed clues to the reader. Watson also finds some clues on his own, The floor was covered thickly with the prints of a naked foot,clear, well defined, perfectly formed, but scarce half the size of those of an ordinary man. (TSOTF 38). This entire scene also highlights all of the clues, both Watson and Holmes describe the clues with very detailed language and the description of the whole crime scene takes up many pages of the novel. Although both of the texts have the same convention of revealing the clues/symptoms early so that the audience can follow along in the case, they go about it very differently. First of all, the original Sherlock Holmes stories were written stories, while House M.D. is a television show. This creates obvious differences in that House is more visual and the emphasis on the clues is created by elements of the scene that the viewer sees, whereas in The Sign of the Four, the reader has to imagine the scene based on the words chosen by the author through Watsons narration. Also, in House M.D., the audience learns the symptoms at the same time as House or even before house by either hearing it from one of the characters or seeing it in a scene. In The Sign of the Four, Clues accumulate, and are often revealed to the reader through a narrator like Watson... The detective grasps the solution to the crime long before anyone else, and explains it

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all to "Watson" at the end. (PBS). The reader initially only gets some of the clues that Watson is able to observe, but the other clues are not revealed until Holmes decides to tell Watson. In conclusion, Arthur Conan Doyle was the founder of the detective genre and many of the genre conventions, [He] wrote fifty-six short stories and four novels that followed Holmes and Watson on all of their adventures. These stories have since inspired hundreds of plays, movies, television series, and other adaptations. (Sundstrom). These modern adaptations, including House M.D. are derived the same formula but they get their uniqueness from the revisions they make to the formula. The convention of clearly presenting all the clues to the audience is changed in House M.D. because it is a television show instead of a novel. Plus, the show is based on the main detective trying to fight a medical malady instead of a clever criminal and to do this he must put together the symptoms in order to diagnose and treat the problem instead of putting together clues to find the criminal and bring him to justice. This twist on the Holmes stories appeals more to modern audiences who would prefer watching medical mystery over reading a murder mystery.

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Works Cited Doyle, Arthur Conan. The Sign of the Four. Egan, Doris, and David Foster. "Poison." House M.D. Prod. David Shore. Fox. 25 Jan. 2005. Television. "The Hound of the Baskervilles." PBS. PBS, n.d. Web. 18 Feb. 2014. Van Dine, S. S. "Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories." American Magazine 1928: n. pag. Mount Royal College Gaslight. Web. Sundstrom, Alison. "From Sherlock to SVU: The History of Detective Fiction." Breaking Character. N.p., 19 Nov. 2012. Web. 18 Feb. 2014.