The novel “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time” by Mark Haddon is a very unique novel. It is unique in many ways as it’s written through the eyes of someone with Aspegers Syndrome and this condition is explored throughout the novel. The novel is about a fifteen year old boy called Christopher who has Aspegers Syndrome. This condition doesn’t allow him to understand things the way people without this condition would. The novel shoes how Christopher grows up, some of the experiences he goes through and how he copes with and understands life.
The themes in the novel are growing up, living with special needs and the most important theme family relationships. “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time” has a unique style in that it has been written through the eyes of a person with Aspegers. As it has been written through the eyes of a person with Aspegers it is different to most novels and reveals the writers personality. The narrator, Christopher Boone, who has Aspegers can’t understand people and has to include every detail and explain everything he says. The narrative style is written in a logical way with lists and diagrams.
Using lists and diagrams in the novel helped us understand Christopher’s condition more. As that is the way he thinks and works things out so he can comprehend them. Also as we see everything form Christopher’s point of view it conveys to us that he sees the world with perfect clarity. In part of the novel Christopher talks about how he doesn’t like metaphors. Christopher doesn’t like them because they confuse him and he doesn’t understand them. “He was the apple of her eye. ” Christopher does not understand this metaphor because he sees it as a lie.
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He sees it as a lie because an apple in someone’s eye has nothing to do with liking someone. Since they have nothing to do with each other it makes Christopher forget about what they were talking about in the first place. This section adds tour understanding of Christopher’s problems because as he has Aspergers he only sees the world in black or white. Metaphors are a grey area so he can’t process them in his brain. Throughout the novel Christopher struggles to interact with other characters and finds it difficult to understand them.
For example, at the beginning of the story when the policeman is talking to Christopher he finds it difficult to interact with him. “The policeman took hold of my arm and lifted me onto my feet. I didn’t like him touching me like this and this is why I hit him. ” Since Christopher has Aspergers he doesn’t like being touched. If someone touches him he feels like he is being attacked and reacts to it. This is why he hit the policeman. Another reason why Christopher finds it difficult to interact with other people is that he can’t understand facial expressions.
As he can’t understand facial expressions he finds it hard to know what people are saying and therefore finds it difficult to interact with them. In part of the novel it explains why Christopher doesn’t ‘get’ jokes. He says “I cannot tell jokes because I do not understand them. ” he doesn’t understand jokes because as he has Aspergers Syndrome he has to analyse and think everything through in a logical way before understanding what things mean. For example, “His face was drawn by the curtains were real. ” Christopher doesn’t understand this joke because after he has thought about it he realises that “drawn” has three different meanings.
This confuses Christopher and because of his condition it makes him feel like three people are talking to him at once. This helps us to understand they way he thinks and sees the world too. Due to the nature of Christopher’s condition he is unaware of the problems he causes for his parents. Since he has Aspergers it causes his parents to argue and eventually causes his mother to leave. His parents would argue because his mother couldn’t cope with Christopher’s actions. For example, one time his mother couldn’t cope was when she took him shopping.
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And you crouched down on the floor and put your hands over your ears and you were in the way of everyone so I got cross…But you shouted and knocked those mixers of the shelf. ” This situation upsets her and causes a row between his parents. After a while both his parents cant cope with arguing anymore so his mum then leaves. She leaves because she believes her husband is better with Christopher and she feels inadequate to deal with him. Christopher is unaware of the problems he causes because that is just the way he thinks. This gives us a better understanding of how he thins and deals with problems to having Aspergers.
As the novel goes on the relationship between Christopher and his father change and conflict develops between them at the beginning their relationship is very positive and strong. For example, when Christopher gets taken to the police station his father shouts at the police in defence of his son. This shows that’s he cares about Christopher and that he is not angry at him fro getting taking to the police station. Also when his father sees Christopher inside the cell they both hold up their hands and their fingers touch. This s how they show that they love each other as Christopher hates to be hugged or touched.
Their relationship begins to deteriorate when his father banged his fist on the table really hard so that the plates and the cutlery jumped around. He also shouts at Christopher. This was the first time his father had lost his patience with him. Later in the novel Christopher made a huge mistake which made the relationship fall apart. His father found the book Christopher was writing and reacted by swearing at him and eventually hit him. This made their relationship hit rock bottom and Christopher began to become scared of his father.
The Christopher find out that his father had lied about is mother being dead and that he killed Wellington. After he finds out he cant trust his father anymore. This causes him to run away to find his mother. When he is at his mothers house his father comes to her house shouting and demanding to see Christopher but he doesn’t want to speak to him but their relationship wills never be the same again. As Christopher has Aspergers he is obsessed with certain things for instance, he likes everything to be in an order and good days and blacks days.
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He works out if he’s having a good day or a black day from cars. If he saw three red cars it was a good day and if he saw four yellows it was black days. He also is obsessed with maths and physics because he likes them and he is very good at them. He likes so much as they only have one answer and are straightforward which helps him to understand them. In the novel Christopher explains his dream. In his dream everyone on the earth is dead except from the people who don’t understand facial expressions like Christopher. Everyone dies because they all catch a virus.
They catch the virus because of the meaning of something an infected person says and what facial expressions they do when they say it. After everyone is dead and there is only people left like Christopher, he can do whatever he wants and never see anyone as they all like being alone. The symbolic significance in the dream is that everyone who is alive is like Christopher. Therefore in the dream Christopher fits in and life is a lot easier because everyone tells the truth and no emotions are included. So they all understand each other and they are all happy.
One key scene in the novel is when Christopher finds the letters from his mother and realises she isn’t dead. When he first realised what was going on he felt sick and confused. This is the first time we can see Christopher experiencing emotional pain. He doesn’t know what to do so he just sits curled up in a ball for a long time and doesn’t speak. This scene helps us to understand Christopher’s condition as it shows us that when Christopher is confused or emotional he doesn’t speak or do anything so that he can either analyse what’s happening or to try put the subject out of his mind.
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Another key scene in the novel is when Christopher talks about when people tell you what to do it normally doesn’t make sense or it’s confusing. For example, keep of the grass signs. He thinks that they should say “keep off the grass around this sign or keep of the grass in this park. ” people without Aspergers would understand this sign but as Christopher has Aspergers this sign confuses him. It confuses him because he thinks abut it logically and realises that there is a lot of grass that you are allowed to walk on.
This scene also helps us understand Christopher’s condition because it shows us that everything he sees he has to be able to understand it logically to be able to understand it at all. In conclusion, I think the novel was really good. I liked how it was written through the eyes of someone with Aspergers as it helped you understand the novel more and also taught you about people with the condition. I also think that because it was written in narrative style it helped you to respond to Christopher better and really understands what he was going through and how he seen the world from his point of view.
