Dr. Roylott Character Analysis

How is Dr Roylott presented to the reader in “The Speckled Band”? Through out the story, Roylott is overall presented as threatening, dangerous and a intelligent man. This can be identified through his appearance, behaviour and motives, there is also evidence of this personality in the story. Also, Conan Doyle uses various phrases and words to describe him which suggests the man to be dangerous. When describing Dr Roylott ,Conan Doyle uses strong words to mould an image of him in the readers mind to be a horrible person.

Phrases such as “a large face, seared with a thousand wrinkles, burned yellow with the sun, and marked with every evil passion” can suggest a lot of things. ” a large face” simply can give the image of quite a large or strong person, this can give the idea that Roylott is towering over everyone else and not someone who loses in physical or vocal arguments due to his threatening and fearsome build. ” Seared with a thousand wrinkles” can show a serious and aggressive man and if we were to go deeper on this point, it could therefore show that he may be a man who is impatient and has a short temper.

The word “seared” is normally used when something burns onto something else so when used in this context it adds a feeling of anger to Dr Roylotts character. “Evil passion” can suggest two things, one is that he is an evil man which can be supported by actions through out the story and “passion” shows he is someone who is quite relentless and sadistic because passion is often used to describe someone who is dedicated and interested with something. the door had suddenly been dashed open and a huge man had framed himself in the aperture” the words “suddenly” and “dashed” shows Roylott to be impatient, selfish and irrespective of others around him. He clearly isn’t scared of anyone as “suddenly” suggests him to be confident about him self as he doesn’t care about any one. “he has no friends at all save the wandering gypsies” this can show a sense of loneliness and recluse about Roylotts character. This can lead to the reader thinking he may be quite dangerous because if you have no friends you tend to not be a very nice person. Among some other quotes, apart from just being trong and threatening he is portrayed intelligently and slyly. Quotes such as “He is so cunning that I never knew when I am safe from him” shows as well as being strong and quite psychotic, he is able to keep his thoughts in order and not constantly be aggressive which makes him even more dangerous. “cunning” is often used to describe foxes and Roylott does not have any resemblance to a fox but this is what makes the quote so effective because it shows the variety of things he is capable of. Also, a quite simple observation of Roylott is he is a Doctor which shows he is intelligent and also supports the fact that he is cunning.

In the story, Roylott had beaten his native butler to death and narrowly escaped a capital sentence and this shows a large area of Roylotts character. The fact that he beat his native butler to death obviously shows he is not afraid of killing another human being but the fact that he escaped a capital sentence shows he is important and respected by some and also supports the point that he is intelligent as he’s clever enough to escape the sentence. The reason why Dr Roylott murdered Julia was the intention that he would gain money which shows his greediness and the extent he would go to to get what he wants.

Also, when he meets Holmes he treats him with hostility and bends a “steel poker” into a curve and throws it into the fire. He also calls Holmes “the meddler” and threatens him and tells him to keep out of his business. When he calls him “the meddler” it may show that although Roylott is intelligent, anger can drown his intelligent out because if he was intelligent he would not call Holmes “the meddler” and suggests he was up to something and didn’t wants Holmes to know anything about.

Generally Dr Roylott is portrayed very negatively and insecure through out the book in a way that the reader will grow to hate him, this creates the ending climax when Roylott is killed by his own crime and wrong intentions. Through out the book his character is slowly revealed to be bold, threatening, intelligent and strong, these merge to create his character and gives more possibility to the mysteries of the main events through out the