Summer Reading-The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-TIme

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

The novel that captivated me most the summer was the The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon. The novel tells the story of an autistic twelve year-old, Christopher John Francis Boone, who is on a quest to investigate the suspicious death of a neighborhood dog. At first, I thought the incessant thrill of adventure had engrossed me most but upon reflecting on the book, I realized that the emotional disconnect of the main character, Christopher, was what truly enthralled me.

Christopher uses reason to run his life, and he is very meticulous in all his does. In one chapter, Christopher goes on to the list the logical reasons for his dislike of the colors yellow and brown. Christopher uses such examples as yellow fever, sweet corn (because it comes out in your poo), and poo to emphasize his dislike of the colors. Likewise, when beginning each day, he uses past experience to set a precedent to determine what kind of day he will have— whereas a Good Day is marked by seeing 4 red cars in a row, a Quite Good Day with 5 red cars in a row, and a Bad Day with 4 black cars in a row.

Yet with Christopher’s tremendous skills to reason his way through life, he falls short in his ability to understand human emotion. Christopher shows a lack of emotion or even an understanding of human emotion throughout the novel. One example is at the beginning of the novel when he cannot relate to the pain and suffering his father has gone through at the loss of this wife and the burden of his autistic child who had just spent the day in jail for having hit a police officer. Even at the end of the novel, Christopher’s home lay in ruins since his mother and father have split, but despite this devastating occurrence, all Christopher cares about is having finished his book on the mystery of Wellington’s death and receiving an A in his next year math class. Christopher’s inability to show any emotion towards the wellbeing of his family creates a separation between the reader and the narrator.

At first, I rather resented the character of Christopher for his inability to see the pain around him, but I realized that despite Chirstopher’s excessive reasoning, his analysis of each situation allowed for the novel to progress. After his father had forbidden him to continue the Wellington murder mystery, Christopher realizes that his father only told him to not mention Mr. Shears in their house, not ask Mrs. Shears who killed Wellington, not ask anyone who killed Wellington, not to trespass, and to stop his ridiculous detective game, so he works his away around his father's rules and continues his investigating. Similarly without his reason and observational skills, Christopher couldn’t navigate his way through the busy underground railway in England.

The novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time was so riveting to me because of the realization that despite the emotional gap between Christopher, the narrator, and the reader, Christopher’s perspective, as a young autistic boy, is the only view-point from which the story could be told to create such a vivid and engaging novel.

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