Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time tells the story of 15-year-old Christopher Boone, a child with Asperger’s Syndrome, a kind of autism. Because the story is told from Christopher’s first-person perspective as an account he is writing with the encouragement of one of his teachers, the story has hallmarks of his perspective, including chapters numbered using prime numbers, accurate sketches that indicate a photographic memory, and the math problems Christopher uses to calm himself. The narration also uses his own stilted phraseology, some that seems to come word-for-word from the science books and videos he enjoys, and some that seems to come from adults having explained things to him, like definitions.
What fascinates me most about this novel is the perspective. It provides a fictional window into alternative perceptions of the world, which aids me in considering the different ways people may need to be treated. For example, not everyone finds touch reassuring, so it might be good to ask or get a sense of whether an individual might like to be touched before doing so. Same goes for eye contact, which also has cultural variations where eye contact can seem insolent or invasive rather than trustworthy. The book also demonstrates that disability may have nothing to do with intelligence, as Christopher is highly intelligent with an exceptional memory and merely puts information together in his own unique way.
Perhaps even more profound is the idea of fiction itself, which Christopher indicates he cannot engage in. He writes, “A lie is when you say something happened which didn’t happen” (24). This seems pretty straightforward: he has difficulty processing lies. But, lying is so much broader and more wound into our daily lives than simple untruths. Christopher goes on to say, “But there is only ever one thing which happened at a particular time and a particular place. And there are an infinite number of things which didn’t happen at that time and that place. And if I think about something which didn’t happen I start thinking about all the other things which didn’t happen” (24). The category of “things which didn’t happen” includes untruths and speculations about the past, ponderings and fantasies regarding the present, and hopes for the future, not to mention aesthetic fictions. For Christopher, admitting any of these into his consciousness opens the door to all of them, which is more than he can stand. His difficulty illustrates the complexity of the average human’s ability to juggle the mix of realities that comprise daily life.
While Christopher’s reality might seem alien, his struggles are also struggles of average people, just a little more exaggerated. We all have cognitive activities we do well, and we prefer those activities when we are surprised or challenged by others. We all can get overwhelmed by too many stimuli and employ coping mechanisms under such circumstances. We all live by a set of social rules that tell us how to behave in a variety of social situations. While we may not have Christopher’s limits in dealing with “strangers,” we do have similar kinds of limits that help us balance social interaction with safety. Seeing Christopher wrestle with his challenges reminds us that we are not alone in our own struggles.
Aside from the depiction of Christopher’s perspective, the plot of the novel operates traditionally, hooking the reader by establishing one mystery: who killed the neighbor’s dog with a garden fork? It then intensifies the conflict by revealing a second: that, despite the claims of his father, Christopher’s mother is not dead. Christopher treats himself as a detective seeking clues, and the reader is eager to unravel the adult problems revealed partly through the dramatic irony inherent in Christopher’s youthful perspective. When eventually Christopher embarks on a journey to London in order to find his mother, the reader reads on, hoping Christopher can conquer the anxieties associated with his disability in order to arrive safely at his mother’s apartment. Yet, even after successfully eluding the police and saving his rat Toby from the train tracks, Christopher does not find comfort at the journey’s end, as adult problems again surface to confuse him.
Christopher’s difficulties speak to the challenges of our social system where individual families are often left responsible for family members who cannot care for themselves. Without assistance or training, not to mention adequate funding, these families attempt to rise to the occasion, but the challenges of such care can end relationships, absorb money that would otherwise go to necessities, and, as frustrations escalate, result in violence. Christopher acknowledges that his mother has hit him and retells a scene where his father, frustrated with the questions he asks neighbors as part of his detective work, grabs him, causing Christopher to hit him, and likely resulting in his father’s hitting back, although Christopher’s memory shuts down from the overstimulation (103-04). That loving parents could get so frustrated with their disabled son that they would strike him speaks to the difficulty of these situations and to the need for society to provide more support, such as caregivers to spell family members from the care that saps their energy and humanity and education to assist them in providing better care for their loved ones.
Work Cited
Haddon, Mark. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. London: Vintage, 2003. Print.
Image Source
"The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time." [Book Cover] amazon.com 26 Feb. 2012. http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=The+Curious+Incident+of+the+Dog&x=0&y=0
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