Sherlock Holmes and Criminal JUSTICE.

Sherlock Holmes is, as before stated, a man of justice. He would do almost anything to solve a case, usually a criminal case. However, I sometimes think that it's much broader. As if Conan Doyle, the author, is trying to emphasize these cases and make them much more challenging. It leads from deduction to action, and soon goes from case to case.

Sherlock Holmes Volume One was about, obviously, a man named Sherlock Holmes and his sidekick, Dr. Watson. They go through a journey of adventureful criminal cases. Crime and death, which was the main themes, are also one of the major issues of this story.

It's clear that justice was served in the book. Well, Holmes served justice more than just once. Like, what. They even say it. He represents justice, but he's not a judge from court. It's very obvious to even figure out is he is the "justice man" - he's a detective! I even knew this back in childhood.

In reality, well, I really won't expect some detective agency appearing in New York. It's not...realistic. I've never seen a detective, detective agency, or incidents where a detective interfered, or what not. Never seen one in my entire life. And, at the same time, it'd probably change my aspect of what I currently think about them and that's not cool.

Reading this book makes me wonder about why we do such things. In the book, they make up reasons, sometimes excuses, about why they've done, say, a locked-room mystery. Most reasons are personal, however. Nonetheless, it makes me think more about Holmes himself. Starting with the basics, "how is he so smart? Where are his parents?" and so and so.

Sherlock Holmes and Steroids. Oh, and the author was on drugs.

Ah, Sherlock Holmes. You don't know what he is (if you do, pretend please) but a simple detective, am I correct?

Well, WRONG.

Sherlock Holmes is a detective, which is rather obvious, but he is a man of justice - as I read, his quotes overflow with such action, power, and intelligence; much so like a man of reform. I refer to him as the new Barack Obama (no offense intended).

I still do NOT clearly understand this difficult book, as I have to re-read a couple of times, but it is almost impossible for me to stop reading at the same time. It's like how you take steroids and drugs and alcohol and a cigar. You want more. You want it. Now you want it, don't you?

Moving on. There are many indirect social issues, and some that are so obvious and some that...you probably never seen yet. In this book, the main 'issue' is crime, or the whole story relates to crime. In these crimes are the involvement of social issues. But there are other times whence there are other ideals in a chapter that lead to a social issue.

In "A Study in Scarlet", a man named John Ferrier becomes a part of the bundle of Mormons going towards Salt Lake City because of discrimination against their religious views. Mormons were known to be a disgrace in the religious New England communities (much like Quakers back in their era) mostly because a part of their religion is for men to have multiple wives. As for that, they were often kicked out of neighborhoods or treated badly. This is a large part of an issue for the chapter because it is very discriminative. Lucy, Ferrier's daughter, cannot marry a non-Mormon, who was a man named Hope. The whole chapter described Hope trying to meet Lucy numerous amounts of times, and in the end, Lucy dies. Hope could not even go to her funeral.

Discrimination gave roles in the chapter, and it also became stereotypical as to when people think all Mormons are just naive people that carry lots of wives. Gender roles also came in play, since men carry that many wives around with them and women usually have no gain. Pretty harsh, ain't it.

Phantom Tollbooth - Connecting/Miscellaneous.

Phantom Tollbooth is utmost fantasy and "pure gold" - that theme, that plot, and Norton Juster's writing style. And don't forget the many parts when he intrudes inside the story, which sometimes explains a moral.

The very first thing I notice is the theme, which is definitely educational. The first thought I came up about the book was "literature about literature". This book speaks in a literature manner, yet in a logical way. In page 34, "When they began to count all the time that was available, what with 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour and 24 hours in a day and 365 days in a year, it seemed as if there was much more than could ever be used." And how letters that were used less tasted less good than the ones used everyday in the Word Market. And homophones, as the Whether Man, whom rather check whether weather's coming than if there is any weather.

On page 26 is an author's intrusion. "You weren't thinking, and you weren't paying attention either." These intrusion's, although contaminate throughout the entire book, is rather hard to find, in my opinion. Compared to Charlotte's Web by E.B, E.B makes them rather easy to get because it describes something about life in a paragraph, and most of the time the word 'life' is in that certain paragraph. Phantom Tollbooth, on the other hand, has intrusions starting from sentences to paragraphs, even quotes. Some are hard to find, yet some are truly easy to find.

Sometimes, you can see morals deeply engraved in your thoughts. On page 117, for example, one of the quotas were: "Then one day someone discovered that if you walked as fast as possible and looked at nothing but your shoes you would arrive at your destination much more quickly. Soon everyone was doing it. They rushed down the avenues and hurried along the boulevards seeing nothing of the wonders and beauties of their city as they went." Once I finished reading this quote, I began to think, "Moral: Enjoy things in life. Don't worry about looking at your shoes, look around you or you might get into a car accident...wait, how can you even cross a street without looking at anything but your shoes?!"

And as what that Phantom Tollbooth Appreciation said,

"Mazel tov, Milo, Norton, and Jules!"