The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime - Essay Example

Fragile things need to be handled with gentle care. People make sure that they handle delicate fabric like satin or lace, chinaware and glassware, and babies with soft touch and extreme caution. This goes the same with feelings, the heart and one of the most important things in whatever kind of relationship, trust. Like glass once shattered, trust can never be glued together by any kind of adhesive material to make it the same as before it has been broken. This is in fact one of the hard lessons learned by Christopher’s father in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. Being born with a type of autism that gifts Christopher with a logical mind, he finds it hard to understand and interpret feelings and things that cannot be defined through black and white terms. His reaction towards this confusion is, most often than not, violence, or in some cases, isolation. Although he doesn’t understand his and other feelings of frustration, disappointment and the need to communicate, whether logical or useless information, his mind’s capacity to store these information is significant in the way he copes in such situations. The need to analyze and to present situations in a logical manner is one of his assets, although when he is bombarded by confusing information, such as metaphorical ideas or informal terminologies, he tends to retract back to his own world, dismissing the new information into the back of his brain and categorizes it as useless or illogical. This pattern of systematizing things into logical and illogical is important in understanding Christopher’s notion of trust, the ultimate trigger that sets him off into an adventure that challenged his logical and social skills. Since Christopher sees things in black and white, he only recognizes trust as something that should be maintained to gain the level of security and sense of comfort with a person or a situation. How his mind works is important in understanding why trust is important in his way of life. Because of his autism, he tends to isolate himself on things that he does not understand, such as meaningless conversations with people. He believes that conversation is to be used only when there is a purpose to it. And that is to gain information. He only believes in the truth, and for this matter, he finds it difficult to understand why people lie. He does not lie since he only sees things in a black or white notion. This is his basis of trust. He feels unsecure and uncomfortable in situations wherein he becomes suspicious of the intentions of people around him, particularly when he does not understand their actions. This can be seen on how he interpreted his father’s lies regarding his mother. When he discovered the letters that his mother wrote for him, he believed at first that there was a mistake in the dates indicated in the letters. Later on, by analyzing the situation, he realized that his father had lied to him about his mother’s death. This event shattered the trust and comfort that he feels with his father. He wasn’t able to understand the purpose of lying and so he isolated himself from his father pushing him to search for his mother. This reaction is consistent throughout the story, as when he felt uncomfortable with the policemen running after him, he hid from them since he does not understand what’s going on. His mind cannot logically piece the situation together, and there seems to be something wrong with the picture and he can’t put the puzzle together. This is because of his black and white notion of things. Because of Christopher’s black and white notion of things, he became curious of who killed the neighbor’s dog. His curiosity is different from those without autism, as he intends to find the truth because that is the only way that he can put logic behind the story. Other people might want to know the killer of the dog just because they wanted to, and this is something that Christopher will not understand. That kind of reasoning would seem to be illogical for him since there is no purpose behind it but just knowing. Truth is based on facts and reality. It is something that cannot be denied or covered up by lies. This is Christopher’s reality and this is his truth. That is the reason he can never understand why his father had to lie about his mother’s death. For him, lies are illogical because they are not part of reality. He does not dream or think of things which has no basis such as lies. His mind works in a mathematical and logical way that it is hard for other people to understand him much as he find it difficult to comprehend other’s thought processes. His survives mainly because of this kind of systematic thought process. He faces only such situations in which he can piece together, such as his mother’s existence. He will not face matters such as the policeman questioning him about the death of the neighbor’s dog and his father’s lies. His reaction mainly to such situations is to turn his back, much the same as he turns his back from meaningless conversations that serves him no purpose. It can be seen that he only conversed with people when he wanted answers to his questions. Thus, proving the fact that his world is only of those puzzles that can be solved in a systematic manner. Because of how his mind works, his meaning of trust is based not upon feelings but upon reality and truth. He will only trust a person only if they give him facts and reality. He dismisses notions of fantasy, thus accepting situations that he can find a system in. This can be seen when he rejects science fiction but loves mysteries as it brings out the truth in a story compared to science fiction which is only a fantasy of the mind, something that cannot be proven or something that can only be fabricated within the human mind. Lies is never part of Christopher’s life because he can only see and understand truth and reality. With this, Christopher tends to reject all notions of lies, and this brings him to turn his back away from people who has lied to him, particularly his father. His notion of truth is the foundation of his notion of trust. That’s why he ran away from his father because he cannot understand his reasons for lying. For Christopher, lies are but fabrications of the mind which distorts his notion of reality. Lies are not real. And so when something is not real, Christopher cannot understand its purpose. Order and system is the reality of Christopher’s life. Lies represent disorder, chaos and unreal. Because it destroys the order of Christopher’s life, he tends to reject it along with the people who told the lies. It is a big blow for the relationship of Christopher and his father since his father is one of the few people he trusts, aside from his mother and his teacher. When he discovered the lies of father, he became disoriented and confused that he withdrew from his father. This made his father regret the lies, and forced him to rebuild the trust. But because of Christopher’s condition, it would be very hard for him to do that since he has disrupted the order of their relationship. Trust is part of an order, part of the real world. It is something that is not fabricated but it is part of the truth. When trust is broken, it is hard to gain it back since one will need to bring the order back to the relationship, such as what happened with Christopher and his father. Truth and trust always go hand in hand. It can never be separated. For when you separate it, it destroys the balance, the order, the system that holds together the relationship. Even if Christopher has a condition that is not experienced by other people, the same situation of trust and truth happens with people. The only difference is that people without the same thought process as Christopher’s would base trust on feelings of betrayal and anger rather than a rejection of what is not real. Read More