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Hieu Nguyen Professor Haas Writing 37 20 February 2014 House vs Holmes The mystery genre has addicted millions of readers all over the world. Not only do mystery books provide action and suspense, there is a special brilliance to each great mystery story that sets it apart from the other genres. Even more so than other genres, mystery stories are inclined to follow a set of standard rules, or writing conventions. The reason for this is because "readers of mysteries seek a particular experience: they want the intellectual challenge of solving the crime before the detective does, and the pleasure of knowing that everything will come together in the end" (Wiehardt). Set by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, mystery writing conventions include such things such as a main detective, a puzzling problem, or a sidekick. Most importantly, though, every mystery story needs a detective who possesses incredible deduction abilities. This is one of the conventions that makes the mystery genre so profound. Readers are fascinated by the superior thinking abilities of the detective and gets more and more sucked in as he uses it to solve the case. This mystery genre convention has carried its way into our modern mystery text House M.D and Elementary. House M.D is a television series that stars an antisocial and tainted doctor who does everything he could, in his bizarre ways, to solve puzzling medical cases that comes his way. Just like in Sherlock Holmes, House has his own modern ways of deduction that is easier to relate in today's society than that of Holmes'.

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In almost every episode of House M.D, viewers can find House at his whiteboard talking to his team of specialists and listing out all the symptoms of a patient to determine what's wrong with them. In an episode of House M.D called "Airborne", House is returning from Singapore on an airplane when a Korean man named Peng starts vomiting. He also had a fever, rash, headache, and abdominal pain. Cuddy, House's associate, tries to convince him that Peng has Meningococcus and that an outbreak of the disease might be imminent. After they've past the airplane's point of no return, passengers on the plane started having the same symptoms as Peng. Although House was reluctant at first, he finally admits that there is a problem and starts going through and examining each patient on the plane. As he is about to perform surgery on Peng, he realized Peng's sickness calmed down as he is in lower pressure. Turns out Peng has been scuba diving the day before and resurfaced too quickly, and all the other passengers got it because of mass hysteria. Through his deductive reasoning, House was able to rule out a few possibilities and pin point the main cause. When House finally admits there is a problem, this is where the "deduction" scene comes in. House begins to list out all the symptoms of Peng and the passengers who got infected, since his team of specialists isn't with him, he chooses random, healthy passengers to sit there and listen to him. House asks the "team" questions that he later goes on and answer himself. In most of his deduction scenes, there are sometimes flashbacks to show how he came up with such conclusions. This is for the "fairness" of the audience. According to S. S. Van Dine, a detective novelist, " The reader must have equal opportunity with the detective for solving the mystery. All clues must be plainly stated and described" (Dine). It is one of the main goal of mystery readers to solve the mystery before the main detective does and that makes the genre even more addicting. Another special part of House's deduction scene is how his team of

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specialists isn't as genius as House, in fact, they would be at our level of understanding if we were somewhat trained in the medical field. At the whiteboard on the plane, House asked a kid, an angry man, and a woman who didn't speak English to be his replacement team. The reason his team isn't as genius as House is for the audience to relate. His team is supposed to be a bridge that helps the viewers further relate to the show just like how Watson is the bridge in Doyle's stories. The deduction scene in each House M.D episode, just like the one in airborne, gives the reader a chance to solve the mystery before House does and also help viewers connect to the show. In Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles, right after being told the of the case by Dr. Mortimer, Holmes goes into his usual phase of deduction. According to Watson, "I knew that seclusion and solitude were very necessary for my friend in those hours of intense mental concentration during which he weighed every particle of evidence" (p. 24). In his deduction phase, Sherlock looks at every single piece of evidence, constructs alternative theories, and looks at what points are important and what points aren't. The main difference in the ways of deduction between Holmes and House is Holmes deals with clues while House deals with symptoms. This gives House a more modern theme and is easier to relate to in today's society since doctors are everywhere. Aside from their few differences in technology and theme, Sherlock Holmes and House are drastically similar. Both detectives have amazing observation and deduction skill, addicted to some type of drugs, and has a sidekick. By being the medical version of Sherlock Holmes, House M.D's modern characteristics help viewers of today's society better relate to the show. The power of deduction possessed by the main detective is a crucial element to any mystery story. Both House and Holmes produced this quality. Their superiority in thinking

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causes the readers to be impressed and gets sucked into the novel and show. House's deducting phase is at his whiteboard, writing out all symptoms and possible causes, while Holmes isolates himself and goes into deep thinking, looking at all the clues, separating and looking at all possible scenarios, and ruling out unimportant information. Both House and Holmes are scientific men, waiting till they absolutely have no other choice left but to resolve to supernatural. Because of this, they never jump to conclusions until they are absolutely sure, even if all the signs point to it. The mystery genre itself is still growing through modern texts like House, introducing new elements and conventions as they come out. Stricter than other genres, mystery writing requires fixed conventions in order to please its audience. These main conventions were set originally by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and has remained intact to the genre till this very day. Although they may have underwent some changes in order to fit the modern audience's needs, his conventions have all been preserved. Thanks to these conventions, mystery genre has been preserved and still flourishes.

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Works Cited Alastair Fowler, The Life and Death of Literary Forms, New Directions in Literary History, ed. Ralph Cohen. London: Routledge, 1974. Page 79. Dine, S.S. Van. ""Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories"" Gaslight. Mount Royal College, n.d. Web. 02 Feb. 2014. Doyle, Arthur Conan. The Hound of the Baskervilles. New York: Looking Glass Library; Distributed by Random House, 1961. Print.