The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Jacob Sutton

708

September 30, 2012

 

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

by Mark Haddon

 

 

      This past week, I read the novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by

 

Mark Haddon, which focuses on the main character, who is also the narrator, Christopher

 

Boone, a fifteen year old autistic genius who lives in Swindon, England with his father. 

 

Christopher is different than other people. He despises the colors yellow and brown, does

 

not like to communicate with people, hates being touched, cannot tell a lie and does not

 

understand the way other people think. He is a math whiz; for example, he can identify all

 

the prime numbers up to 7,057 and loves puzzles.

         

     Christopher values animals more than people. When his neighbors dog is killed with a

 

pitchfork, he tries to solve this crime as if it were a puzzle and a math problem. This begins a

 

journey for Christopher that takes him places that he could not ever imagine, both physically

 

and mentally.

         

     Since Christopher is not a typical person, it is difficult to measure how much Christopher

 

grows as a character throughout the novel. His thoughts are so different than others. For

 

example, he describes his observations of the universe in this way:
 

                 "When the Universe has finished exploding, all the stars will
                
                  slow down, like a ball that has been thrown into the air, and

                  they will come to a halt and they will all begin to fall towards

                  the center of the universe again. And then there will be nothing

                  to stop us from seeing all the stars in the world because they

                 will be moving toward us, gradually faster and faster, and we

                 will know that the world is going to end soon, because when we

                 look into the sky at night, there will be no darkness, just the

                 blazing light of billions and billions of stars all falling."

     He states over and over again that the brain is just like a computer and that humans are

no more special than animals. This is why Christopher is so intrigued by the horrible crime

against the dog. Christopher's social skills are limited by his autism which makes it easier for

him to identify with animals rather than with people.

         
     When events in the story challenge him emotionally, Christopher's reactions are not

typical. When he discovers that his mother is alive or when he travels by himself to London,

Christopher gets sick and blacks out. This seems to be a way for him to avoid his mind

getting overloaded. He pushes himself and in the end, he grows stronger and finds ways to

overcome some of the challenges that limit him.