Behold Emperor Xi, leader of the modern world 

The plot of The Sign of the Four hinges on the British Empire. Captain Morstan, Mary Morstan's father, and Major Sholto served in the Indian army - the army used by the British to rule India. India had been a British colony since 1757, first ruled by a private company, the East India Company, and then directly since 1858. There, it turns out, Sholto betrayed a man named Johnathan Small. He had been imprisoned for murdering an Indian merchant and stealing his treasure. He had buried the treasure and promised to split it with Sholto and Morstan if they went to fetch it for him. When Sholto kept it for himself, Small decided to track them down. He returns to England with the help of an indigenous man from the Andaman island, Tonga. Both Morstan and Sholto are dead, but he still wants his treasure. However, Tonga takes things too far by murdering Bartholomew Sholto, one of the sons of Major Sholto, using an Indian poison. The story reflects an anxiety about the empire. While it brought wealth into Britain, this wealth was taken from the people the British had subjugatedBring under control by defeating. . The novel stages this anxiety by having an Indian man sneak into the house of a Briton who had gained his wealth from colonialism.

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The Sign of the Four is both a novel about the racism of late VictorianThe era when Queen Victoria was on the British throne, from 1837 to 1901.  society and an exhibit of it. This is made clearest in the portrayal of Tonga, the Andamanese man who helps John Small get his revenge. Tonga is able to commit the murder of Bartholomew Sholto because he is short, like most people from his homeland. Holmes solves the case partly by reading a book of racist anthropology and realising that an Andamanese person would be small enough to sneak into the house and murder Thaddeus Sholto.  Small himself is patronising towards Tonga, and even uses him as a fairground attraction. On their way back to England, he says, they "earned a living at this time by my exhibiting poor Tonga at fairs and other such places as the black cannibal. He would eat raw meat and dance his war-dance." Small's actions suggest that Victorian Britains treated other races poorly. But the novel also embraces such racist stereotypesStereotypes are ideas about how people will act, based on the group to which they belong.. Johnathan Small, himself, as his name might suggest, has grown more like his "savage" companion. The novel hints that the empire corrupts Britain both because of its immoral plundering of other countries, but also by exposing them to "savage" races. While it is a criticism of the empire, the terms of the criticism are also racist.

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Justice is an important theme in most detective stories. The Sign of The Four is no exception. Thaddeus Sholto is convinced that an injustice has been done to Mary Morstan because she has been deprived of her share of the treasure. In the letter she takes to Holmes, he writes "you are a wronged woman and you shall have justice". That is why he sends the pearls, and that is why they come to meet him, triggering the events that lead to Holmes solving the murder of Thaddeus' brother Bartholomew. Holmes even lets Small off, because he is convinced that Tonga acted on his own initiative. Small says: "I weltedHit or strike something hard. the little devil with the slack end of the rope for it, but it was done, and I could not undo it again." To the modern reader, and perhaps to many Victorians, the justice of blaming everything on Tonga might not seem clear cut. It is hard to say that justice can ever be served when thinking about imperial plunderTheft..

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Sherlock Holmes himself is portrayed as a creature of pure reason. We see evidence of his incredible deductiveComing to conclusions through reasoning. skills, including when he is able to recount Watson's brother's sad life story by looking at the key scratches on his pocket watch. But Holmes has no time for emotion. Watson falls in love with Mary Morstan, and Holmes struggles to understand this. As he tells Watson: "Whatever is emotional is opposed to that true cold reason which I place above all things." The question of what matters in life, reason or emotion, becomes part of the story itself, as Watson begins to talk more and more about his feelings for Mary, changing the way the reader experiences the plot.  While Holmes is able to explain what has happened, almost all of the action is driven by emotion. Without Thaddeus and his father's guilt, John Small's anger, and Watson's love, there would be no story.

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The main emotion in the story is fear. The Sign of the Four is sometimes called a gothic novel, which means, in part, that it is about fear. The atmosphere of the novel is one in which things are unexplained and scary. Conan Doyle shows that Victorian society runs on fear. Thaddeus and Bartholomew live in fear of having their wealth stolen. Their father employed boxers to protect him and they do the same. The fear of foreigners is everywhere in the novel.  Even Holmes, who tries to show that there is nothing to fear because there is nothing that cannot be explained, is afraid that Watson will leave him. He gave a most dismalVery bad. groan. "I feared as much," said he. "I really cannot congratulate you."

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