The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - Essay Example

work] The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon A Critical Review The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time is a novel written by Mark Haddon, best known as a children's author, who was said not entirely sure, at first, whether he was writing for adults (BBC 2004). The story is written in the first-person narrative of Christopher Boone, a 15-year-old boy suffering from autism, and living in Swindon, Wiltshire. This paper looks into the novel with nature of autism as its theme. It starts first with a description of the main character, Christopher; goes on to the summary of the novel, and then examines the use of autism in the novel and finally looks into its nature. The Story. Christopher finds a neighbor's dog, named Wellington, murdered. With the help of his teacher, Siobhan, he decides to write a book about his attempt to solve this mystery. During his investigation, Christopher meets people living on the same street but whom he has never met before. He eventually discovers that Mr. Shears, a neighbor, had an affair with his mother, Judy. Christopher records this as well as other discoveries. His father, Ed, discovers his writings and confiscates them but the son tries to find them back. In his search, Christopher finds letters from his mother which his father had hidden. Supposedly, Judy had died of a heart attack as told by Ed, and now Christopher comes to know that she is still alive. He is quite shocked that his father would lie to him about this. On the bed, he vomits and groans until his father comes back. Realizing that Christopher had read the letters, Ed cleans up Christopher and then tells him the truth about Judy and confesses to killing Wellington in his anger to Mrs. Shears. Christopher, however, feared that his father may also kill him, and so decides to get away and look for his mother. He embarks finally on an adventurous trip to London, guided by his mother's address from her letters. With Christopher with her, Judy eventually leaves Mr. Shears, and then moves into a rented room in Swindon, London. Judy agrees to daily visits from Ed for Christopher who remains afraid of his father. The story ends with Ed promising that he will rebuild trust with Christopher and the son asserting that he will take further A-level exams and attend university. Autism. The main character, Christopher Boone goes to a school for students with "special needs" as he has a form of autism. As the novel opens, Christopher tells us "I know all of the countries of the world and their capital cities, and every prime number up to 7,057." He can rattle off prime numbers and square roots with the ease, and can speak about the origins of the universe. But he has more problems with people. He has trouble figuring out other people's feelings, and he doesn't understand why they tell lies. Strangers, noise and unfamiliar situations terrify him. Christopher can be childlike at times, but he can also be chillingly detached. In his favorite dream, he tells us, a virus has killed all the people who look at one another's faces when they talk; the only survivors are ''special people like me,'' who ''like being on their own'' and who are as ''shy and rare.'' With this, Christopher appears to understand that he is different from other people. A whiz at math, he enjoys puzzles and has a photographic memory. Christopher cannot read facial expressions fluently, that he uses a code he devised to guide him in his supposed behavior for the day as he, himself recounts - On my way to school I watch the cars going past the bus and remember their colours.3 red cars in a row mean that it is going to be a Quite Good Day. 4 red cars mean that it is going to be a Good Day. 5 red cars mean that it is going to be a Super Good Day. And 4 yellow cars in a row mean that it is going to be a Black Day, which is a day when I don't speak to anyone and don't eat my lunch and Take No Risks, because yellow is the color of custard and double yellow lines and Yellow Fever which is a deadly disease. For him, the human face is an embarrassing zone; it is dangerous for him to stare at it for too long. He is told by his carer that raising one eyebrow can 'mean lots of different things. It can mean "I want to do sex with you" and it can also mean "I think that what you just said was very stupid".' Christopher likes lists and facts, and is very observant - I had been hugging the dog for 4 minutes when I heard screaming. I looked up and saw Mrs. Shears running towards me from the patio. She was wearing pajamas and a housecoat. Her toenails were painted bright pink and she had no shoes on. Christopher has a fear of strangers and new places, and his favorite dream is one in which everyone except people similar to him dies. In addition, he is over-sensitive to information and stimuli that he screams and reacts violently to people who touch him. He is simple and direct and does not boast of being good - I do not tell lies. Mother used to say that this was because I was a good person. But it is not because I am a good person. It is because I can't tell lies. Christopher hates the colors yellow and brown, but loves red. This extends to adding red food dye to brown- or yellow-colored food (and being unable to eat two different kinds of food that are touching. Finally, he dislikes eating food from new places and the furniture being moved. All of these are not usually observed with normal people. Christopher's gift is focused on mathematics as shown by several famous puzzles of math and logic that he solves. His interests are reflected in his numbering his chapters strictly with prime numbers, ignoring composite numbers such as 4 and 6. So the first is Chapter 2, followed by 3, then 5, 7, 11, and so on. Christopher's world needs order and precision as shown in the way he wants to mark everything - "It was 7 minutes after midnight." "I put the dog down on the lawn and moved back 2 meters." Anyone can just say, it was just some few minutes after midnight. Was he looking at the time often Or simply, "I moved back a bit." But no, he clang to exactness by supplying numbers every time he could, just as he knew about Mr. Jeavons having "60 tiny circular holes in each of his brown shoes" Christopher's autism is also reflected in his switching of fonts, reversing of pictures, and using long, run-on sentences when describing the surroundings. In one of the incidents narrated, Christopher is nearly killed by an oncoming train as he retrieves his pet rat that has scampered onto the tracks of the London Underground. Yet, he remains unaware of the closeness of his brush with death. Ignoring the world outside is an autistic feature, as one cannot take so much stimuli at a time. Jeremiah Horrigan (2005) said The Washington Post described the novel as "a postmodern canvas of modern sensory overload." Of autism, Dr. Leo Kanner introduced the label early infantile autism in 1943 (Autism, NIMH 2007). He suggested the term "autism" to describe the fact that the children seemed to lack interest in other people. Kanner said autism displays conditions characterized by varying degrees of deficiencies in communication skills and social interactions, along with restricted, repetitive, and stereotyped patterns of behavior (IRCA 2007). Autism is classified by the World Health Organization and American Psychological Association as a developmental disability that results from a disorder of the human central nervous system. The causes, symptoms, etiology, treatment, and other issues of autism are controversial (IRCA 2007). Autism manifests itself "before the age of three years" according to the World Health Organization's International Classification of Diseases (ICD 2006). Dr. Leo Kanner's first reports of autism emphasize "autistic aloneness" and "insistence on sameness," many of which were manifested in the character of Christopher. In the novel, the first was partly reflected in Christopher's kind of happiness as in this extract - Then she showed me this picture and I knew that it meant 'happy', like when I'm reading about the Apollo space missions, or when I am still awake at three or four in the morning and I can walk up and down the street and pretend that I am the only person in the whole world. Again, "insistence on sameness" may be interpreted as unwillingness to accommodate differences, hence the need to do some counting often and the emphasis on colors on the part of Christopher. CONCLUSION There are many types of autism, one reason why some of those afflicted with autism criticize the novel as not truly representative of their deficiency. Some autistics are said to be nearly dysfunctional and mentally disabled and some experience only mild symptoms. A paper published in 2006 concerning the behavioral, cognitive, and genetic bases of autism argues that autism should perhaps not be seen as a single disorder, but rather as a set of distinct symptoms as social difficulties, communicative difficulties and repetitive behaviors that have their own distinct causes (Happe, Ronald & Plomin 2006). An implication of this would be that a search for a "cure" for autism is unlikely to succeed if it is not examined as separate, albeit overlapping and commonly co-occurring, disorders. In this novel, autism is represented in all of Christopher's unique capabilities as well as limitations. Connecting autism with detection in a mystery turns out to be a brilliant device on which to hang a novel. Mark Haddon seemed to have discovered this by chance. In an interview with Kellaway (2003), Haddon said he didn't set out to employ autism at first. The character to fulfill the emotionless narrator type gave him the idea of using a child who became the owner of the voice. Christopher came forward and the rest is history. Writing novels should not simply provide pleasure. If they can teach society as in informing people about a certain not-so-well-understood human condition like autism, then this is a welcome move. Not so many years ago, the movie, The Hand that Rocks the Cradle, also informed the public about Asthma. The character was about a woman who lost her baby, had applied as a baby sitter to steal a baby, and incidentally also a husband and a home. She kept looking for ways to have the mother killed like an accident. In so moving as a character, the public is informed about how an asthmatic person behaves with her disease. This is a great way for people to enjoy literature, at the same time learn about human conditions - just like Hadden's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Works Cited "Autism Spectrum Disorders (Pervasive Developmental Disorders)" National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). 14 March.2007. BBC. January 7, 2004. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. ArtsJournal.com. 28 January 2007. 13 March 2007, from http://www.artsjournal.com/publishing/Publishingarch20040101_archive.shtml Epistemological aspects of Eugen Bleuler's conception of schizophrenia in 1911." Stotz-Ingenlath G., Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy. 2000;3(2):153-9. ISSN:1386-7423 Happe F, Ronald A, Plomin R. Time to give up on a single explanation for autism. Nat Neurosci. 9 October 2006 (10):1218-20. Heaton, P. & Wallace, G.L. (2004). Annotation: The savant syndrome. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 45(5), 899-911. Horrigan, Jeremiah. Getting on the same page. Times Herald-Record. 25 October 2005. 14 March 14, 2007 ICD version 2006, World Health Organisation Codes for Pervasive developmental disorders, F84.0-F84.9, 20 January, 2007 Indiana Resource Center for Autism (IRCA), Diagnostic Criteria for Autistic Disorder. Indiana Institute on Disability and Community, Indiana University. 27 February 2007. Kellaway, Kate. Autistic differences. Guardian News. Interview. 27 April 2003.14 March 2007, . Stenson, Jacqueline. "As autism cases soar, a search for clues", Newsweek, 24 February 2005. Read More