GCSE English Literature: The Sign of Four

The Sign of Four (1890), the second Sherlock Holmes novel, is one of the 19th-century novels set for GCSE English Literature by AQA, for example. It is short and fast-moving, but it is also a novel about reason and feeling, greed and empire, and it rewards careful reading. Conan Doyle died in 1930, so the text is out of copyright and this material quotes it directly.

The questions trace the story from Holmes's cocaine and boredom in the opening chapter, through Mary Morstan's mystery of the vanished father and the annual pearls, the meeting with Thaddeus Sholto, the locked-room death of Bartholomew at Pondicherry Lodge, the search with Toby and the Baker Street Irregulars, and the river chase after the Aurora, to Jonathan Small's confession about the Agra treasure and the novel's circular ending, in which Watson gains a wife, Athelney Jones gains the credit and Holmes reaches for 'the cocaine-bottle'.

You will analyse the main characters and the relationships between them: Holmes as a brilliant, arrogant and self-destructive detective who places 'cold reason' above everything, Watson as a warm and honest narrator, Mary Morstan as a Victorian heroine seen through Watson's eyes, and Small as a criminal with a grievance. The themes covered are reason against emotion, greed and the corrupting treasure, crime and justice, love, and the British Empire in India — including the 1857 uprising, the Andaman Islands and the dehumanising portrayal of Tonga, which modern readers recognise as a product of Victorian imperial attitudes. Narrative methods are explained where they matter: Watson's limited first-person narration, the embedded confession, and the way suspense is built and resolved.

The quiz asks twelve one-answer questions, each quoting any lines it discusses. The flashcards cover characters, plot facts and key quotations. The printable written work practises the extract-to-whole-novel task: two questions print passages from the novel (Holmes on 'stagnation' and Holmes on love and reason) for analysis linked to the whole text, and six ask about characters, themes and context, each with a model answer and key points.

• Recall the plot of The Sign of Four and how the mystery is solved
• Analyse Holmes, Watson, Mary Morstan and Jonathan Small with quotations
• Explain themes of reason and emotion, greed, justice and empire
• Comment on Watson's narration, the embedded confession and the circular ending
• Use Victorian and imperial context critically

Practice material written by Zestly, based on the DfE GCSE English Literature subject content (a 19th-century novel) and The Sign of Four as set by exam boards such as AQA. Quotations are from the public-domain text (Project Gutenberg edition, published as The Sign of the Four).