#love writing essays on this stuff instead of alevel revision

[starlostlix]

Moriarty the Patriot and crime as a performance (The Noahtic crime vs Whiteley's crime)

[I am back again to talk about some themes, I don't know how much i'll be able to post with a-level exams coming up but in about a month's time i'll be able to post however much i want. I do have another post on the go but I don't know when that will be done]

As I read volume 10, I took an interest in how Milverton explained his plan to turn Whiteley into a murderer. And there was one line that really made me think, where Milverton says that "The 'hero' of our performance will be arriving at home soon." It seems like a simple enough statement but it really is indicative of a larger theme - the performance of crime. A theme explored by both this arc and the majority of William's crime, and even links to Whiteley's eventual demise.

To begin, an explanation of Milverton's plan to force Whiteley into murder. Milverton is somewhat of a free agent - as much as he represents the House of Lords when conversing with Whiteley, he is not affected by their reputation. He doesn't care about Whiteley possibly publishing the documents because he will not be caught up in the consequences. His main reason for his plan is pure thrill - the thrill of drawing the good man into sin. By blackmailing Sturridge, one of Whiteley's police bodyguards, over the safety of his family, he is able to eliminate every person Whiteley cares about, forcing Whiteley into killing out of rage. Essentially, Milverton is the snake tempting Adam (instead of Eve) to eat the apple (commit sin, in this case murder) for his own enjoyment.

In this plan Whiteley is made to become a villain through his own rage at the murder of his family. With this act, his goals of equality are tarnished and the equality movement is heavily pushed back due to the public seeing a figure of good draw to evil. Milverton actively manufactures a situation to make this possible through his go-to method of blackmail. Milverton has set the scene and has put the events in motion - he is the one in control of this performance as the writer type figure.

However, a wrench is thrown into the projected plan. With the Moriarty Brothers plan of killing Whiteley and blaming the Lord of Crime for his family's deaths, Whiteley is made into the tragic hero of the story, someone with virtuous traits who (because of a fatal flaw) meets an untimely end. The public may see him as a martyr for the cause of equality, but the reader sees how his fatal flaw (the murder of Sturridge) leads to his early death at William's hands. Yet, Milverton insists that he is still in control - not only has his plan to corrupt a good man worked, but it's also pushed his new rival into a corner where he has to take the blame for something he didn't do. His performance may have changed, but these unexpected changes have made it more compelling for his audience.

With this change, it is quite good to compare this plan to that of William's plan on the Noahtic. In this plan, William manages to drive a man to commit murder and exposes his crime to the world, much like Milverton planned to do. However the key difference is the motive - William does this to expose an evil man for previous evil deeds. His target, Lord Enders, was kidnapping random civilians to murder for his own enjoyment, and was also very dehumanising towards the lower classes. Enders is a textbook target of the Moriarty Plan - a rotten noble abusing his inherited power to hurt others. The plan to expose his crimes involves a stage and a performance in more ways than one - not only did they utilising an actual opera performance, but they manufactured a situation to expose Enders for murder. With his murder and eventual suicide, Enders' deeds are exposed to the world and he received his punishment.

Another aspect of performance is the entire Moriarty Plan in itself. By turning London into an audience for the staged crimes, the classes will unite to condemn the murderer (the Lord of Crime) and to support the heroic detective (Sherlock Holmes). Sherlock is a later insertion into the narrative, yet a very important one - a detective exposing the crimes of the nobility through solving cases that William has set up. He is turned into a symbol for the people to root for, much like Whiteley was with and without William's intervention. Sherlock is much more than a chess piece in the plan by the tower bridge confrontation - he is the centre of it besides William as the Lord of Crime. The protagonist of the plan to match The antagonistic Lord of Crime. To the people of London, the entire Moriarty Plan is a performance of crimes solved by detective Sherlock Holmes' heroism, much like the books that Watson (or Conan Doyle) writes.

Milverton and William both use crime as a performance of sorts, but for very different goals. Whilst William uses staged crimes/exposés to bring awareness to the crimes of the nobility and unite the classes, Milverton uses it as a personal experience of the thrill of turning a good person to evil deeds. It also directly ties in to their definitions of their own crimes - The Lord of crime as a 'necessary evil' vs Milverton as 'pure evil'. And whilst The Lord of Crime's performance is made for the wider audience of the public, Milverton's performances are his own personal works of art, made to give him the thrill of manipulating others into sin.

Essentially, there is a face off between two different performances of crime - the selfless performance of one's downfall created for the greater good vs a twisted performance of someone else's downfall created for one's own selfish thrill.

[I tried to keep this one shorter since I have revision to do, but I wanted to talk about this a little bit, causing it's just recalling interesting. It's quite hard to explain but I love themes and characters like this. Hope people enjoy!]

[starlostlix]

MTP, hope and reasons to live/die (parallels from early story vs later story + extra Jefferson Hope focus)

cw/ mentions of death and su!cide

[ok so this turned out a lot longer than i expected and also is much more analysis than i expected uh enjoy]

So to introduce this i need to add some manga dialogue from Chapter 2 - The one grapefruit pie, and i need to go through it line by line.

[Context - in order to have William kill Baron Dublin, Michelle and Mr Burton have sworn their lives to William. William speaks to both of them.]

1) Liam: "and if you have, as you say, found hope... perhaps you could continue living for a little longer?"

2) Liam: "Please, do not forget that you still have one more important person left in your life."

3) Liam: "I would like those lives you have entrusted me with to be the first ones to witness this ideal world. So until then, do take care of them for me."

4) Michelle: "Not only did you take my reason to die but you're even giving me a reason to live."

5) Albert: "The moment one is given a reason to live, one fears death. As long as they [Michelle and Burton] live, they won't betray him." + Louis: "That goes for us too, after all, our brother william is an admirable leader."

So this set of dialogue establishes a few clear themes that pops up throughout the whole series especially later - hope and reasons to live/die. It's something the main characters debate within themselves, especially William. And this dialogue, once you know the rest of the story, is actually a lot more important than it seemed at first.

Line 1 establishes that William has given them hope not only for the future, but for themselves too. Hope is also a key theme of the series - whether it be in the form of Jefferson Hope (who i will come back to later) or hoping that the Moriarty Plan will create a better future or hoping to meet in another life (from William's letter to Sherlock) etc. But there's a sense of slightly twisted irony here - William has given Michelle and Mr Burton hope for themselves and the future, but by 'The Final Problem' arc William has no hope for himself. William doesn't see a way he can live due to his own actions and his plan entailing his death - he has a reason to die and feels unworthy of life.

To line 2. William talks about how Michelle and Mr Burton have each other in life, seemingly saying that it is important to keep living for each other's sakes. Again, William gives this advice here but later on he is ready to sacrifice himself for everyone else. His brothers are important enough to him to give him a reason to die - he wants to die alone to protect them - which is the opposite of what he talks about here. By the time he gets to New York, it is Sherlock who is the important person in his life and is giving his life hope for a better future for himself.

Line 3. William wants Michelle and Mr Burton to live to witness a better future. As much as this sounds hopeful and optimistic, knowing that William plans his own death to see them in to this ideal world makes it much darker. Keep those lives safe he says, knowing his own won't be there to see that future.

Line 4 is pretty key in the fact that it establishes the subjectiveness of reasons to die and live. Michelle's reason to die (her depression and mourning of her son) is replaced with the hope of a better future. On the other hand, William's hope for a better future is what's pushing him towards his death. In fact this idea of the reason to die being replaced with a reason to live matches the way Sherlock saves William from death in London and helps him find a reason to live again in New York. Louis when watching the tower bridge confrontation also suggests that Sherlock could be a reason to live for William, just as William was for him. The idea is both inverted and paralleled at different points for William, with his reasons to die coming from his ambition to make the world better and his overwhelming sin, and his reasons to live being the people in his life (specifically the one person who could truly understand him, Sherlock). This even further links back to point 2 - for William, Sherlock is the important person in his life later in the story.

LINE 5. This one really hits different. Louis and Albert here basically say that as long as they live they won't be able to betray their brother William. This means that William has already established that he wants his brothers to live on and see the world they help create. Meaning that he, from very early on, planned on dying alone for the cause. As much as other people in his organisation said that they would sacrifice their lives for it, William has found many ways to make sure that doesn't happen, and has placed the burden on himself instead. As much as the rest of the organisation's reactions made it seem like William choosing to die on his own was decided later in the story, the hints are there even as early as chapter 2. He was always intent on dying alone and saving his family and friends. He never wanted any of them to die.

With all that established, back to Jefferson Hope. As a character he is also inherently suicidal in this plan to test Sherlock. He isn't presented to have any strong reason to live - he has no family, not much money or resources, and his illness means he hasn't got long left. But he doesn't have a reason to die, instead he has simply accepted that death is coming soon due to his illness and he can't do anything about it. However William doesn't use his situation to help him find a reason to live on, since he can't cure his illness. Instead he motivates Hope to do something with his final days - revenge. The reason why Hope hasn't got a reason to live is Lord Drebber, the nobleman who killed his wife and faced no consequences. William decides to use that hatred and trauma as a tool in his plan, taking out a corrupt nobleman with a convincing story so nobody looks into a mastermind (except of course Sherlock). William chooses to take advantage of Hope's lack of hope/reason to live instead of trying to help him find some, a far cry from the encouragement he gave Michelle and Mr Burton.

Hope's life is then used as a bargaining chip, presented to Sherlock to test the lengths he would go for a mystery. However, Hope's life is not the focus of that event, and it never was. Hope's life doesn't seem to be heavily important to William or anyone in the Moriarty organisation - not even to Sherlock and Watson. Instead of focusing on Hope's life, Sherlock shows William that he wants to solve the mystery himself and not have the answer handed over to him, but by The Two Detectives he is shown to have doubts about not killing Hope. It is John who cares about not killing Hope at the time, but for the same reasons that he gets annoyed at Sherlock for killing Milverton - the consequences for Sherlock. Even though it is clear that if Sherlock killed Hope there wouldn't be legal consequences, to Watson the weight on the mind of being a murderer is a consequence in itself. Hope never finds a reason to live because he's not given any and actually does not have the time to find one due to his imminent death once he's arrested, because no one thought they could help him. Sherlock says that he was sorry he could not give Hope any hope as he arrests him. So goes the irony of a character called Hope not being able to have any hope.

And what does this tell us about the series itself? Well, it shows a very varied image of hope and reasoning to live. It shows how subjective it is and how sometimes it's not even possible to find it, depending on the situation. But that occurs because of the system - if Drebber hadn't been an awful person and able to abuse his position as a nobleman then perhaps Hope would've had his wife still, and would have spent his final days at peace with her. If Michelle's baby has reached the doctor in time, they'd still be together as a happy family. The reason people in this story are pushed to these feelings of hopelessness can all be linked back to the unfair hierarchal class system really and that's why William is doing what he's doing to change it. William's goal is to create hope for the whole of society by removing the class system, even if a few people like Hope or himself have to lose it along the way. Hopeless death for the few in the name of hopeful lives for as many people as possible.