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So I had a long conversation a couple weeks ago with my husband about Sherlock, Greek Tragedy, Prophesy, Camus, Nietzsche (Eternal recurrence of the same, Ubermensch, The Abyss, etc.) and I just wanted so badly to put the whole thing in a big coherent meta series before unleashing it upon tumblr so that you would all see my brilliance and learn a lot about philosophy and worship me and I would understand everything, and achieve enlightenment and sublimate into pure energy and go streaking across the universe in bliss and then I realized. That was never going to happen. Breathe. One thing at a time ok? Ok. I’m new to fandom and I am new to tumblr and I am really new to meta (the only one I’ve done before is this little thing here , it’s an Each Frame Tells a Story post about parallels with City of Angels).
I’m just going to talk about Prophecy. I’m going to try and give you a glimpse, just a teensy glimpse of what I’ve got going on up here in this big bad brain of mine.
First I think It would be helpful to explain a little about how prophecy works in Greek tragedy, that it is more than just foreshadowing, it has some other very specific elements that make it more interesting than that.
Describing the practice of religious prophets, Heraclitus says, “The Lord whose oracle is at Delphi neither reveals nor conceals, but gives a sign”. This is a very important aspect of prophecy. This giving a sign is like leaving a clue. Perfect for a detective story. I will argue that Jim is a prophet in all the tragic senses of the concept.
SHERLOCK: So how’re you going to do it …. burn me?
JIM (softly): Oh, that’s the problem – the final problem. Have you worked out what it is yet? What’s the final problem? I did tell you … (sing-song but still softly) … but did you listen?
My reading of this, gleaned from others, is that the sign he gave was the ringtone “Staying Alive”, and the Final Problem is, as Camus says, “The only serious question in life is whether to kill yourself or not.” Shakespeare expressed the same sentiment when he had Hamlet ask “To be or not to be, that is the question.” Sherlock is fuckin’ deep, amirite?
So in terms of prophecy, the ringtone did not reveal to Sherlock that Moriarty was dealing with this “only serious question” aka “the Final Problem”, but did not conceal it either. He gave a sign, a clue, both to Sherlock and to the audience, so that later we might go “aha!” At the time we, the audience, took it (or were allowed to take it) at face value - Staying Alive is playing, so it must be the “wrong day to die.” It seemed to apply only to that moment, everyone stays alive right now and lives to fight another day. Heraclitus says again that of prophecy, or logos, “forever do men prove to be uncomprehending, both before they hear and once they have heard it”. Sherlock berates people for seeing but failing to observe. Here Jim berates him for hearing but failing to listen. But some things must be experienced, foreknowledge is as good as useless.
Another very important aspect of prophecy in Greek tragedy is that it is inevitable. There is NOTHING that will change the course of events once a prophecy is uttered. Attempting to escape from a prophecy will inevitably bring it about, often because it was misunderstood in the first place. A quintessential illustration of this phenomenon is found in Oedipus. You may be familiar with the story already, but for those that aren’t, Oedipus’s father heard a prophecy that Oedipus would grow up to kill his father and marry his mother. Obviously, this would suck for all involved, so the father, trying to avoid this outcome, sent Oedipus away to live with another family. Eventually, a grown-up Oedipus heard the same prophecy about himself. He didn’t want to do that, obviously, so thinking the people who raised him were his father and mother, he decided to get as far away from both of them as possible. Which brought him back in contact with his real father and mother so that the prophecy could take it’s course, despite everyone doing their best to avoid the inevitable outcome. There is another, less overtly tragic example of the inevitability of prophecy in The Matrix:
The Oracle: What’s really going to bake your noodle later on is, would you still have broken it if I hadn’t said anything?
Though The Matrix gets this aspect of Greek prophecy perfectly correct, the plot follows the more Christian pattern of use of prophecy in modern fiction where the thing that is prophesied is the person who will save mankind. We see this in Star Wars, The Matrix, Harry Potter, and many others. But Greek prophecy is different. It usually has to do with death or heartbreak or both, not salvation. I feel that when Jim tells us in response to the comment that people have died, “That’s what people DO”, he establishes himself as a prophet in the most essential Greek tragic sense. The true tragedy and the real concept of fate behind prophecy is the understanding that people die. We know in our own lives that we are mortal, but refuse to understand, both before we hear and after we have heard. I expect to come back to that concept in later meta.
So how is this inevitability of prophecy relevant to Sherlock? The next prophecy by Jim I would like to discuss is:
JIM: I’ll burn you. I’ll burn the heart out of you.
I feel that Sherlock misunderstands this threat/prophecy, which leads to the fulfillment of it. As Sherlock later tries to do with Magnussen and opium, I think that in TRF, Sherlock is trying to give Jim a target from which to hurt him that does not actually matter to Sherlock. His reputation is irrelevant to Sherlock. If other people think he is stupid, it just means that they are stupid. He does not like or enjoy fame, and it gets in the way of his work. He carefully sets up a target (his reputation) for Jim to destroy, because he knows that Jim won’t stop until he feels he has won. Jim of course appears to take the bait (Sir-Boast-a-Lot video) and destroys Sherlock’s reputation, but he knows that this is not “burning the heart out of him”. I don’t actually believe that Sherlock and Mycroft were 15 steps ahead of Jim, and feel that there are parts of Lazarus that are still missing or obscured. But I do firmly believe that the build up of Sherlock’s reputation was done deliberately to draw Jim out, and cause him to make his move. The fact that he tries the same tactic again later on Magnussen shows that he does not yet realize how spectacularly it failed with Jim. We have watched throughout season 3 as Sherlock’s heart is burned out of him. Being away from his friends for 2 years could have been the meaning of the threat, or the choice between dying with his friends thinking he was a fraud and living as his friends died. But it was none of these. By faking his death, Sherlock believed he has outsmarted the threat/prophecy. Of course he suffered, willingly even, but he was sure by the end of the 2 years he would come back to London with his heart (his relationship with John) still intact. But one cannot escape a prophecy, one cannot outsmart fate.
So having spoken about the prophecies I understand, because they have already come true, or begun to come true (there may be more heart burning to endure), and keeping in mind that Jim is a prophet and prophecies are inevitable, let’s talk about one I am not sure about:
JIM: Kill you? N-no, don’t be obvious. I mean, I’m gonna kill you anyway some day. I don’t wanna rush it, though. I’m saving it up for something special.
Has this prophecy been fulfilled? If Mary is working for Jim, it may very well have been, as Sherlock flatlined from Mary’s bullet. Being killed by the woman that replaced you in the affections of your soulmate would definitely count as something special. And well over two years after the threat is uttered doesn’t seem like rushing it. Sherlock must be killed by Moriarty, the prophecy will be fulfilled, and Moriarty knows this, which is why he says he owesSherlock. I would really like people’s opinion of this, because knowing this killing is inevitable, I think it would be helpful to know if it has happened already or not. For our boys’ sakes, I hope so, and that’s going to be my interpretation, until further notice, but in a later meta, I might elucidate why I still have my doubts. Depending how I feel about it by then.
I think the show creators are using prophecy in an absolutely masterful way in this show and because of all the Christ and angel text and subtext, I also believe (and hope desperately) that we will not be left ultimately with a tragedy, but with a story of redemption. Mycroft also seems to act as a prophet when he elucidates that we are dealing with “The promise of love, the pain of loss, the joy of redemption”. And so I choose to believe that redemption is the endgame. Just because a heart is burned, does not mean that Sherlock can not rise from the ash, as he has already resurrected more than once. (And he knows ash. Don’t tell him he doesn’t.) The genius of the show will be in showing how tragedy and redemption can coexist.
Thanks for reading. Anticipate future posts on: Nietzche’s “Eternal Recurrence of the Same” and Fate, The difference between Sherlock’s two deaths and resurrections, Hubris as a tragic flaw and the science of cheating death, the Ubermensch or Outlaw and Sherlock’s antiheroes and villains. If the gods allow, cuz I don’t yet know how those will go, but these are topics I am currently stoked about.