The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time By Mark Haddon

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time is told through the eyes of a fifteen year old boy named Christopher Boone. Christopher has a highly-functioning form of autism which allows him to understand complex mathematical problems, but also leaves him unable to comprehend many simple human emotions. His inability to understand metaphors, distinguish emotions, and his lack of imagination makes it possible to consider Christopher as functioning like a computer rather than functioning as a human being. Throughout the story, Christopher is faced with many challenges which he conquers using the stable and never changing system of mathematics. All of these factors suggest that Christopher does, in fact, function like a computer,

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The use of elements of narrative and figurative language help establish a sense that Christopher is ‘the other’ in this novel. The choice of a fifteen year old boy with an unidentified disability as the narrator affects the experience of the story. His choice of words, his individual points of interest and competence to describe situations and prioritise information indicates that Christopher does not fit in with the general society’s standards. The narration in the novel is often substantially idiomatic. This highlights the key communication barrier between Christopher and others. There is an expectation for the character to have more of a sophisticated language but the narration has a simple use of sentence structure. For example, it is presented

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Christopher felt guilty of all the negative, preconceived thoughts he had before going to Leonie and Andrew’s wedding on Friday. The night before, while getting his outfit ready for the wedding he dreaded meeting a few people at the wedding tomorrow. For some unknown, (apart from devious idle gossip by those who relish hate instead of love, war instead of peace and grief instead of joy. And to his surprise he allowed these negative emotions seep through his heart like poison ivy. Worse still, on meeting them he wanted to slap them in their faces without a given reason other than; they deceived, betrayed, misunderstood and forsaken him in ways that are blurry, patchy, but hurts every time he thinks about what was said. Yet within reason his

Meanwhile when Christopher says, “I like maths because it solves problems.” This explains how he presents his story in a specific way. He demonstrates this when he writes his chapters with math problems and uses the whole chapter to solve it. This gives the reader an understanding that he solves life problems with the same processes in which he solves the maths problems that he is given. Throughout the novel, Christopher provided pictures and illustrations about what he was talking about.

In Mark Haddon's contemporary novel, "The curious incident of the dog in the Night-Time", the protagonist, Christopher Boone, does seem completely unsuited to narrating a novel, as he takes on his authorial voice, thus demonstrating symptoms of his disability, 'Asperger's Syndrome.' This is a syndrome that enables him to see the world only through his limited perspective, which is closed, frightened and disorientated - which results in his fear of, and inability to understand the perplexing world of people's emotions. His description of events can be somewhat unreliable as he is unable to see the real truths that lie before him. As he narrates, readers are confronted with his peculiarities - whether it is not liking to be touched, his fear

In the short amount of pages that I have read of this book, I have learned more than I ever knew before about autistic people. Something that caught my attention was when the police were talking to Christopher about the murdered dog, and Christopher couldn’t stand all of the questions being asked, so he shoved his head into the grass and covered his ears. Reading this book has been a good learning tool for me and I believe that it will help prepare me for different situations that I could encounter in the real world. Someday I could potentially have a child that is diagnosed with autism. Reading this book will have given me some background as to how an autist thinks and

In The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, Mark Haddon uses Christopher’s unique voice to show the importance of human connection and communication within our world. In doing so, Haddon is able to communicate the importance of order and stability in Christopher’s life. This creates a unique perspective of an aspergus sufferer, enabling an exploration of the difficulties inherent in raising an autistic child and thus alters the perceptions of the reader concerning the complex connection between disability and dependence.

Fitting with the common theme between the two novels of the judgment of others, each heroine falls victim to a horrible misjudgment of the character of another. After discovering that the engagement between her brother and her friend Isabella has been broken, Catherine finds she has grossly misjudged her friend’s character, and thinks, “She was ashamed of Isabella, ashamed of ever having loved her” (Northanger 150). Elizabeth, on the other hand, finds her attachment the Wickham wholly inappropriate after receiving her letter from Mr. Darcy. After digesting the shocking contents of the letter, Elizabeth “grew absolutely ashamed of herself.—Of neither Darcy nor Wickham could she think, without feeling that she had been blind, partial, prejudiced, absurd” (Pride 156). And indeed, as suggested by Elizabeth’s mention of Darcy, this misjudgment goes on to affect each girl’s attachment to her future husband.

The reader follows Catherine's stream of consciousness as she searches for clues and pieces of evidence: “Here was another proof. A portrait—very like—of a departed wife, not valued by the husband! He must have been dreadfully cruel to

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Christopher’s real change happens when Christopher finds a stack of letter’s his ‘supposedly dead’ mother - “Mother died 2 years ago.” - writes to him whilst finding the book he was writing. This happens because his father tells him not to mind other’s business - “Father said, ‘Just try and keep your nose out of other people’s business.’” - and in result of not following his dad’s orders gets his book taken away. During his ‘detective work’ Christopher finds out the real reason as to why Wellington’s owner’s husband left as he was one of Chris’s main suspects. He finds out that his mother was having an affair with him. So when Christopher goes to find the book he finds the stack of letters - “One other possibility was that Father had hidden my book somewhere in the house.” -. All this leads to his change because if it wasn’t for his realization that his mother was alive he would have stayed and nothing would have differed. It is what leads to Christopher wanting to find his mother, and on this journey he experiences new danger and he learns how to cope with the real world. I believe the finding of the letters is very important as it helps the readers to sympathize with Christopher it also makes you sad especially because he is autistic and cannot understand why his father would lie to him.

Therefore, when Catherine speaks to Henry about novel on their walk, she thinks base off John Thorpe 's saying, that Henry don’t read novels and because is not clever enough for them and gentlemen read better books (Austen, Chapter 14). After Henry clarifies he likes the book, Catherine changed her thought and expressed this, “ I am very glad to hear it indeed, and now I shall never be ashamed of liking Udolpho myself. But I really thought before, young men despised novels amazingly.” (Austen, Chapter 14). These details from the novel described the process of how Catherine changed her thought about novels after John and Henry. This supports that Catherine formulates her opinions based off John’s and Henry’s opinions. All of these are some examples that support Catherine’s reliance of judgement from other people in her life.