The Final Problem - Themes and Circumstances of Writing

Themes and Circumstances of Writing

"The Final Problem" was intended to be exactly what its name says. Conan Doyle meant to stop writing about his famous detective after this short story; he felt the Sherlock Holmes stories were distracting him from more serious literary efforts and that "killing" Holmes off was the only way of getting his career back on track. "I must save my mind for better things," he wrote to his mother at the time, "even if it means I must bury my pocketbook with him."

Conan Doyle sought to sweeten the pill by letting Holmes go in a blaze of glory, having rid the world of a criminal so powerful and dangerous that any further task would be trivial in comparison (Holmes says as much in the story). In 1893, Conan Doyle and his wife toured Switzerland and discovered the village of Meiringen in the Bernese Alps. This experience fired Conan Doyle's imagination.

"In 1893 he wrote in his diary, which still exists, that he wanted to kill Sherlock Holmes at the Reichenbach Falls," says Jürg Musfeld, director of the Park Hotel du Sauvage, where Conan Doyle is believed to have stayed during his visit to the village.

But this device failed in its purpose and pressure from fans eventually persuaded Doyle to bring Holmes back, writing The Hound of the Baskervilles (set before "The Final Problem") and reviving him in "The Adventure of the Empty House". There were enough holes in eyewitness accounts to allow Conan Doyle to plausibly resurrect Holmes; only the few free surviving members of Moriarty's organisation and Holmes' brother Mycroft (who appears briefly in this story) know that Sherlock Holmes is still alive, having won the struggle at Reichenbach Falls and sent Moriarty to his death – though nearly meeting his own at the hands of Moriarty's henchmen.