An Imagination Exercise

I especially liked the story we read because I'm a huge fan of the TV show Sherlock. This story must be the inspiration for the rivalry through out the show between Sherlock and Moriarty. After I finished the story I tried to think about how this related to the class. I think it comes down to who knows the truth. This story is about a game between two masterminds. Each one is trying to stay one step ahead of the other. But if both of them are trying to do this, then how do they ever know if they truly know the truth. They both try to think through how the other will react to what they do, so it comes down to who thinks it the furthest through. But if the other doesn’t realize that he is behind, then his truth is wrong. We see that Sherlock thought he was ahead of Moriarty the whole time, when in reality Moriarty was able to escape the police and track Sherlock’s movements the whole time. We also will never know the truth of what happens on the cliff between Sherlock and Moriarty. Both of them are gone, but Watson has to live with the fact that he won’t truly know how it ended. I think that is an important tool in story telling. By leaving a story with no clear ending, it lets the reader imagine what could have happened. The author has shifted the responsibility, and even though it can be extremely frustrating as a reader, it is also an exercise. It could be that the author just got lazy, or maybe they are challenging the reader to continue on their own and create something better than what the author could have ever imagined.