Sherlock Holmes, Fairies, and the Devil Baby of Hull House

 

  1. In my opinion he failed to get the concrete evidence and trusted the word of the creator. If the creator was being asked if they were lying there is no way they would admit to that and I don't think Doyle took that into account. 

  2. He realizes that they all share stories of the tragic deaths of their children and loved ones. One story that was told was of a daughter who died in an insane asylum. The girl watched her father go crazy and try to kill her and her mother. After that he killed himself and this young girl had to live with that in her brain. The traumatic experience stayed with her throughout her life. She was sly and would run away. It got to the point that the mother had to send her to an insane asylum for her own safety. She was there on and off for five years until ultimately she died their from heart failure. When people experience major traumatic events in their lives they lose a lot of hope in their lives and I think when that happens they grasp onto the belief that these types of things can exist because of the numbness they feel. In the essay "Sir Arthur and the Fairies" he grasps onto the idea of the fairies being real with very little evidence because he wants it to be true. Similarly in "The Devil Baby of Hull House" everyone believes it with little to no evidence due to word of mouth and the fact that they want it to be true. 

  3.  I agree with Doyle in the sense that it is very hard to prove the existence or nonexistence of things on this earth due to the fact that there is still so much that is unexplored and not yet explained in a scientific manner and may never be. Something that I think is beyond science is the existence of aliens. I don’t think that they are the green strange creatures that they are painted to be in movies but I think it is selfish and quite self centered of us to believe that in a vast universe we are the only planet that is able to house and type of life. I don’t believe we will be around long enough to develop the technology to determine the existence or not or life on other planets.

  4. Sirens are commonly thought of to be half human half fish, mermaid like creatures. In very early mythology sirens were said to be half human half bird creatures, but the myth has since changed. Sirens are known to draw sailors in with their voices to crash into the rocks to their inevitable doom. In the article Are Sirens Evil Mermaids Or The Same Mythical Creature? It is mentioned that “The siren is said to be able to read the victim’s mind. The siren song they then sing convinces the unwitting sailor that the siren is the “perfect person” for them, and they are uncontrollably drawn to be with the siren.” (Stokes). Reading the minds of the sailors made the sirens incredibly powerful and made their success rate or killing nearly 100%. The sirens were said to be known to kill themselves if they failed. In the tail or odysseus, It is said that he made his men plug their ears with beeswax to pass the sirens and he was tied up to tell the tale of the song of the sirens. After Odysseus successfully made it past the sirens, “the sirens threw themselves into the sea and drowned. The evidence of sirens is very slim and is normally debunked to be just fish or the sailors seeing things. Personally I want to believe there is some sort of creature like a siren out there because I believe that most myths have some truth behind them. I also know that there is so much of the ocean that is not searched and the creature might not exist exactly how we believe it to but I do think there may be a fish like creature that might make a very specific sound or calling may exist. 

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