In Mark Haddon’s novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, 15 year old Christopher Boone investigates the death of his neighbor’s dog, Wellington. During his investigation he discovers information that changes his life and parents’. The book shares similar characteristics to Fangirl, a novel by Rainbow Rowell.
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime is categorized as a mystery novel with a contemporary narration. The book is read through the protagonist, Christopher’s perspective. Mark Haddon creates a narrative in Swindon, England during 1998. Christopher alternates the narration from the story to information and facts that he finds relevant to the plot. Rainbow Rowell also switches from the narrative to passages from Cather’s (main character) fan fiction. Fangirl takes place
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Cath, short for Cather, feels intimidated by her new and unknown environment. Similar to Christopher, Cath prefers to keep to herself and steer away from crowds. She labels herself as “socially retarded.” Unlike Cather, Christopher’s social awkwardness is a result of his autism. An example of his behavior can be seen towards the end of the book when different strangers approach Christopher and he barks at them, almost instinctively. Equally noticeable, is both character’s constant desire to escape reality, Cather is gifted at writing and literature, allowing her to create an alternate world with her words. “To really be a nerd, she’d decided, you had to prefer fictional worlds to the real one.” Christopher is mathematically advanced; he distracts himself with numbers and math problems. He uses trivia problems to understand the outside world. He believes everything has a rational and scientific explanation. Christopher’s autism differentiates him from Cather. He is inclined toward logical and orderly thinking. Whereas, Cather prefers to analyze situations
What makes fiction novels especially interesting are the larger messages hidden within them. The novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon does just that. The novel centers around a 15 year old genius Christopher Boone who has a mental disability of some sort, struggling with communication because of it. The book is comprised of a murder mystery novel Christopher sought to write after discovering the bloody murder of his neighbor's dog, Wellington. Gradually, the story focuses away from the main conflict and morphs into a complicated story about Christopher’s life. With that, Haddon brings out the complexity and hardships of human life, specifically through the topic of truth and deceit. The truth comes out eventually; fabricating it now will only prolong the unwanted effects later. Also, lies ruin relationships, possibly for good.
In the book, Christopher was trying to solve the murder of Wellington, Mrs. Shear’s dog. He wants to go find out information about whom the suspect could be, but he has difficulties talking to strangers. His anxiety holds him back and makes him awkward around all strangers. While questioning his neighbors about what they know about Wellington he said, “‘Do you know who killed Wellington?’ I did not look at his face. I do not like looking at people’s faces, especially if they are strangers. He did not say anything for a few seconds”(36). This quote demonstrates Christopher’s severe social problems. He is withdrawn from the conversation and appears to be uncomfortable. While Christopher may not realize it throughout the course of the novel, his disability is a conflict to himself. When Christopher was trying to make his way to London to reunite with his mother, he had to travel through a train station. This situation could have been overwhelming to anybody who had never traveled alone, but Christopher didn’t handle his unease like most normal people. “And there was sweat running down my face from under my hair and I was moaning, not
In the Novel, The Curious Incident of The Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon, we are shown that the truth is not always accurate and that lies are sometimes necessary. Christopher Boone is a 15 year old who has Asperger’s Syndrome, which lies in the Autism Spectrum. Due to this condition Christopher does not understand emotion, metaphors – which he considers a lie – and knows all the prime numbers up to 7,507 as well as all the countries and cities of the world. Christopher’s life revolves around the truth and throughout the novel he is seen to grow and learn to cope with different things when dealing with lies. Most events in this novel are situated around a lie that has been told; nearly every character tells one and has to face the
The curious incident of a dog in the night time is an adult novel which tells the story of a fifteen-year-old boy called Christopher Boone, who discovers that his neighbour’s dog is dead. He did some detective work to solve the mystery of who killed the dog, as he was a fan of Sherlock homes stories, as the story unfolds he finds out a lot more than he thought, regarding himself and parts of the world he did not know existed. Mark Haddon gained influence from Jane Austen who wrote about dull lives of individuals with empathy that seemed somewhat intriguing, he mentions that he was trying to do this exactly with the novel the curious incident of the dog. By taking a life which seemed unpleasantly guarded, and to write about it in a book, where the male protagonist would read a mystery murder and show that if you looked at life with enough imagination it would seem endless (Haddon,
This essay will be an analytical essay where the novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon will be analyzed and interpreted. The focus will be on the language of the novel and the themes and messages.
Attention Grabber: In the “Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time,” we see a young adult, Christopher, traveling through life and overcoming obstacles he never thought he could.
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
The mind of an autistic person is fascinating and frightening because usually their actions can’t accurately express what their brain is thinking. It is frustrating to try and determine what a child with autism is trying to say, and often results in them being misunderstood. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon, tells the story from the perspective of Christopher Boone, a fifteen year old boy with autism. Chris is brilliant at math and science, but is unable to understand or express emotion. His difficult home life further contributes to his illness; he doesn’t have anyone at home who supports him and tries to help him. His teacher, Siobhan, is his only friend and the only person who tries to help him learn to
Christopher was born with Asperger’s Syndrome, which limits his communication skills, interaction with others and his ability to read emotions that other characters portray. In addition to dealing with this, Christopher also struggles to come to terms that his mother “died of a heart attack and it wasn’t expected”. (P. 36) This dialogue between Christopher and his father
Throughout the novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon, emotions are the most challenging problems of all for Christopher. However, beyond the drama of Christopher’s crises involving feeling, or interaction with other people, we glimpse a more general idea – that dealing with people and feelings is difficult. Discuss in relation to the themes and characters of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time.
Alexander, Christopher’s interactions with strangers improved throughout the novel. In the beginning of the novel, Christopher did not have the best interactions with strangers, due to his tendency to always stay far within his comfort zone. His interactions also include how he interacts physically. He was not able to control his emotions the way others would’ve liked him to in the beginning, which this quote proves correct, “I didn't like him touching me like this. And that is when I hit him.” An example from the end proving that he grew and learned to interact better would be when he was at the train station trying to get around. Although he was not 100% comfortable speaking up and asking for help, he was able to, due to the confidence he got from his experiences throughout the
The following questions take you from page 1 of the novel to the very end. These questions focus your attention on key events in the plot, on certain digressions in the story, on certain characters (especially Christopher), on the book’s style, on some of the book’s dialogue, and on important interactions between Christopher and others.
He rarely socializes when he is at school or out in public, and when he is at home, he prefers to be alone his room with his pet rat. “And I really like little spaces, so long as there is no one else in there with me.” (Haddon. 50). In the rare occasion that Christopher associates with people out in public that he does not know, the interaction usually ends quickly due to Christopher feeling uncomfortable and leaving in a hurry. When he had no choice but to engage in conversation with a neighbor who was nothing but friendly to him, he began to think of every possible thing that could go wrong and quickly decided to leave. “And I thought she might be ringing the police and then I’d get into much more serious trouble because of the caution. So I walked away” (Haddon. 40). Even though Christopher does lack social skills, there are still ways he can learn to become more social and ways of interacting with others to better him. Unfortunately he does not put any effort into increasing his social skills, and neither do any of the few people he has a relationship with, causing him to resource to isolating himself because that is what he has always been used to doing. Overall, isolation plays a major role in both novels, causing both main characters to isolate themselves in similar ways. With both characters choosing to isolate themselves comes a great deal of independence.
Characterisation is a convention that presents the theme difference by using Christopher as a subject to communicate the theme to the readers. Mark Haddon arranges his novelʼs structure and layout to present difference to the audience. In the novel, Mark Haddon creates a story with a suspenseful feeling. The layout structure of the novel is arranged differently than other novels. In the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night time the climax, rising tension, falling tension and conclusion is jumbled together to form a different yet satisfyingly similar form of essay. If one has read the novel one will see that a climax is seen at the very start of the novel. This feature creates a certain tension to the readers. Upon reading a reader will notice another climax when Christopher decided to leave home. This is an unexpected twist of event which most people would find very suspenseful knowing that Christopher has autism. This goes way back to the stereotype that people with autism is ʻdifferentʼ. Even though that may be the case the story teaches its readers that this isnʼt true by showing how Christopher traveled kilometers to see his mother a lady he hasnʼt seen for a long time. During the start of the novel people will find it odd to find a suspenseful moment happening at the start of the novel that is the death of Wellington. From this
Although Catherine is passionate about reading her literature, she drastically fails to read and understand social interactions between