Sherlock Out Of Fandom. Essay №2. Confession and Forgiveness
I was planning to write a second essay in this series on the antagonists of ‘Sherlock’, but my other occupations took my time, and suddenly I found myself facing the Shrove Sunday. So I thought: why not to devote my second essay to forgiveness? Inspiration came from the book ‘How to be a conservative’ by Roger Scruton that I’m currently reading. In the first chapter, he writes following passage on this important phenomenon: “In the Christian tradition the primary acts of sacrifice are confession and forgiveness. Those who confess, sacrifice their pride, while those who forgive, sacrifice their resentment, renouncing thereby something that had been dear to their hearts. Confession and forgiveness are the habits that made our civilization possible”.
Of course, I am familiar with the fact that Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat, the creators of ‘Sherlock’, identify themselves as atheists, but it doesn’t change the fact that the Christian motives are constantly present in their work. Which is understandable and natural – whatever their beliefs might be, they were born, raised and currently live in a society whose culture was defined by Christian patterns and ideas. Two of them are confession and forgiveness described by Scruton. And although the former is not a sacrament in Anglican Church (like it is the case in Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches), it is still a vital component of the human relations, and ‘Sherlock’ proves that Gatiss and Moffat understand it very well (though maybe without acknowledging it consciously).
‘Sherlock’ presents two major attitudes towards the wrongdoing and forgiveness. Sherlock is the embodiment of the one, and John – of the other, and these two ways stay in opposition to each other. The whole show is in itself an example of the second law of dialectic – unity and struggle of opposites. The Common, represented by John, is faced with the Special, represented by Sherlock, and throughout all four seasons they struggle more than they unite. In this essay I endeavor to show how the problem of forgiveness (and confession) demonstrates this opposition.
It has become the common practice to emphasize that the main character of ‘Sherlock’ is a rude person who doesn’t care about people’s feelings and therefore feels free to say to their faces unpleasant and sometimes even cruel things. This is of course a justifiable statement, but it overlooks one important thing: because Sherlock is not afraid to hurt people’s feelings, he doesn’t mind when they are hurting him. Therefore, he never resents and takes offences. The reason for both offending and not feeling offended are quite rationalistic. Sherlock is not a malicious person who takes pleasure in insulting others; he says things because they are true, and it is what his rational mind is seeking. He can’t hide from Molly that her boyfriend is gay, and from Mrs. Hudson – that hers is an adulterer, because to do otherwise would be in his mind irrational and wrong. On the other hand, when he understands that his words ‘crossed the line’ and did no good, like in case with Molly and her Christmas present, he apologizes for his misconduct without any inducement from others. The same is true for him not feeling offended. For Sherlock feeling aggrieved because of something Donovan or Anderson have said would be very silly – they are just ignorant unintelligent people who don’t deserve his attention. As for the others – he doesn’t care what they think about him, because doing so would be in his mind irrational and stupid. Mind goes before the heart in Sherlock’s world, and that has a huge impact on his attitude towards the wrongdoing and forgiveness.
John, on the other hand, represents a completely different approach. He sticks to the traditional old-testamental view: if someone behaves badly towards me or doesn’t follow the conventional morale rules, then I am entitled to feel offended and expose the wrongness of the said person. The motives behind the wrongdoing don’t matter, and the fact of the caused offence is always stronger than any excuses, no matter how justifiable they are. This attitude is visible from the very beginning of the show. In episode two of the first series, ‘The Blind Banker’, when John returns for the second time from the supermarket, he is angry because Sherlock doesn’t rush to his aid. From Sherlock’s point of view this would be irrational and unnecessary: John is a grown up man who can handle a couple of shopping bags. But John is angry not because he needs help, but because for Sherlock to help him would be a ‘morally’ right thing to do. Sherlock doesn’t stick to this rule and provokes John’s resentment. The same is true for his later conduct, in the episode three, ‘The Great Game’, when John is offended because Sherlock doesn’t show any compassion towards Moriarty’s hostages. Such compassion is completely meaningless for their task, but again it is ‘a right thing to do’, and John is angry because Sherlock refuses to express it. John is moved by moral, not by mind, and by the sense of duty, which he understands again in the same moralistic categories Sherlock couldn’t care less about. Therefore, unlike Sherlock, John demands an apology and feels entitled to receive it when someone does him wrong.
These two opposite attitudes clash many times through the series, but the most significant examples present itself in its second part. These are of course the cases of Mycroft, Eurus, Mary, their wrongdoings and confessions, and Sherlock’s and John’s forgiveness. Let’s take a closer look at them.
In ‘The Final Problem’, the third episode of season four, Sherlock suffers from actions in direct or indirect manner provoked by his siblings, and, despite of the fact that he does not behave as an ‘offended’ person, it is still visible that he is hurt. But in the end everything is played out exactly like Scruton describes it in his book. In the scene ‘Goodbye, brother mine’, Mycroft confesses his wrongdoings by admitting that it was him who introduced Moriarty to Eurus, and later he is forgiven by Sherlock. The words ‘He’s not as strong as he thinks he is’ and ‘He did his best’ show that Sherlock understood the motives of Mycroft’s actions, accepted them and forgave his brother. The same is true for Eurus. Although she makes Sherlock figure out by himself what her crime was, she gives him the reasons for committing it: ‘I had no one’. Her words help him to figure out her riddle and, in its turn, to understand why she did it. Again, like in case with Mycroft, his mind is helping Sherlock in curing his heart and embracing his sister despite of the awful things that she did. Confession leads to forgiveness in both cases, and in the end of season four Sherlock finds peace and brings his family together.
In the case of Mary Sherlock remains faithful to this course. At the beginning, he is shocked and hurt by her lies, but then he comes to understand why she lied. In the scene in the fake house he is offended not by the fact that she concealed the truth and not even because she shot him, but primarily because she didn’t come to him with her case – that is, behaved irrational and illogical (as he sees it). Later he quickly takes her side, because he again accepts her motives and is now more concentrated on helping her than on feeling offended by what she did. Sherlock even says that despite shooting him she saved his life, which proves that he doesn’t hold a grudge against her for what she has done.
John however pursues a different tactic towards his wife. It is quite natural for him to feel hurt, but later he does something Sherlock did not in case of Mycroft and Eurus: he rejects Mary’s confession (just like in ‘The Empty Hearse’ he rejected Sherlock’s, when he refused to hear him out). He takes the memory stick, but he never reads it and forgives Mary not because, to quote Scruton, he ‘renounced’ his grievance, but because it was a right thing to do (just like it was a right thing to do to forgive Sherlock when he thought that they both were going to die in the scene underground). Mary’s sin remains unspoken, and it comes back to them both, when they are confronted with a ‘ghost’ from her past. But it is too late to fix anything – Mary dies, and here we come to the most important part of the show devoted to forgiveness – to John blaming Sherlock for her death.
His reasons for that seem again very natural. John blames Sherlock not for provoking Norbury (because, as the viewers rightfully point out, he was not there to witness it), but for breaking his promise. From his perspective, it is a justifiable thing to do, because if one person promises something to another and then breaks this promise, the latter is entitled to feel wronged. John was pursuing this logic from the very beginning of the show, so it’s not a surprise that he holds to it in this case. The whole tragedy however consists in the fact that this strategy has its flaws. In this particular case it made John believe in a falsehood, namely in the idea that Sherlock killed Mary. John was so engrossed in feeling wronged that he completely forgot about the free will of his own wife and about her entitlement to take the decisions in accordance with her own judgment. Moreover, he continues to hold to these false views in one the most dramatic scenes of the whole show, when Sherlock is brandishing a scalpel in front of Culverton Smith and John neutralizes him, believing again that he is doing the right thing, that is saving a man from an attack. It is later approved by Greg Lestrade when he says: “You probably saved his [Smith’s] life”. And the fact that John doesn’t stop there and kicks Sherlock who lies on the floor and doesn’t even try to defend himself, is approved by Sherlock who says: “Let him do what he wants. He’s entitled. I killed his wife”. To which John answers with another lie: “Yes, you did”.
This cocoon of falsehoods is destroyed in the scene at Baket-street, when John finally confesses. Again, some viewers may say that it doesn’t count, because Mary is not actually there and in the reality she never finds out about John’s adultery. But John’s confession is directed not only at her – the main addressee of it is Sherlock. Too ashamed to look directly at him, John says: “I’m not the man you thought I was; I’m not that guy. I never could be. But that’s the point. That’s the whole point. Who you thought I was ... is the man who I want to be”. He wanted to be a man who always does the right thing, but in the reality he was just a human who pursued a strategy that was far from perfect and drove him into a corner. He turned out to be not as wise as a man he thought was a heartless machine but proved to be more human than most of ordinary people. That’s why Sherlock forgave him – he understood and accepted his confession, as only a true friend could have done. ‘The Lying Detective’, which started with a mockery of a confession (Smith told his friends about his crimes, but they never forgave them – they always forgot), ends with a true reconciliation of two people who accept each other as they are and are ready to forgive even the gravest mistakes.
These are my thoughts on confession and forgiveness depicted in ‘Sherlock’. Thank you all for reading such a long essay; forgive me for possible grammar mistakes – English is my fourth language, and I have still much to learn. Big thanks to wonderful Ariane DeVere for ‘Sherlock’ scripts (https://arianedevere.livejournal.com/). Tagging @rey-jake-therapist and @oxalisvulcanicola, in case you find it interesting.
