Red Herring In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound Of The Baskervilles

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a red herring as a “Herring to which a red colour is imparted in the process of curing them by smoke” another definition describes the more idiomatic history to the word. “To draw a red herring across the track to attempt to divert attention from the real question; hence a red herring, a subject intended to have this affect”. This definition of a red herring is most commonly used as a clue to confuse or distract the reader. In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 's The Hound of the Baskervilles, red herrings are used frequently in many different ways. The Hound of the Baskervilles is set in the town of Devonshire in the Baskerville Hall, the home of previously murdered Sir Charles Baskerville, on the foggy moor filled with mysteries and people of unknown backgrounds. When the body of a well-known, widely-liked, man is found, Sherlock Holmes is the first on the case. With his assistant Watson narrating, the reader is in a position in which being in the mind of the genius is not the case. Through Watson’s point of view, Doyle uses red herrings to disrupt reader’s theories and threads as to who murdered Sir Charles Baskerville.
The most repetitive red herring is found in the title of the book, the ferocious, menacing hound. The hound is first introduced in the second chapter in an old tale about an evil ancestor to the Baskervilles known as Hugo Baskerville, and how Hugo started the curse known throughout Devonshire. While a night sheperd was working