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Christopher’s condition affects the way he connects and communicates with others. Although his IQ appears above average, Christopher’s experiences and interactions are very limited by his developmental disorder. In the first half of the novel, the majority of Christopher’s interactions are with people who know Christopher very well and understand his unique needs. Although Christopher’s father becomes easily angry, he builds his entire life around accommodating Christopher’s disorder and obviously has an inexhaustible supply of love for his son. Siobhan, Christopher’s teacher, is specially trained to help Christopher navigate the demands of life. Even Christopher’s neighbor, Mrs. Alexander—who does not play a major role in his life—seems to know him well enough to exhibit patience and adjust her expectations according to his condition. For the most part, Christopher does not socialize beyond this small handful of adults, and any exceptions tend to be catastrophic, such as when he is arrested for striking a police officer who touches him. Christopher’s social circle is extremely restricted for a fifteen-year-old boy, and these social limitations offer a glimpse into the limited opportunities he will likely face as an adult, despite his many talents, as the bulk of the population is ill-equipped to understand and accommodate Christopher.
The range of Christopher’s interactions expands when he travels to London by himself, and this journey underground offers a more vivid glimpse into just how harrowing the world can be to someone like Christopher, and how much the world misunderstands him. For example, Christopher has an extreme aversion to physical touch. At school and home, people accept Christopher’s aversion and know to keep their distance. Christopher and his father even develop a special “hug,” which involves holding up their palms and touching fingertips, like a secret handshake to show affection in a way that doesn’t upset Christopher. In public with strangers, Christopher resorts to barking like a dog to keep people away from him. When he rocks, groans, or hides on a luggage rack for hours at a time, people mock or yell at him. Although Christopher has loving parents and a highly trained, compassionate teacher, his journey to London demonstrates the obstacles he will face as he grows into an adult and seeks his independence.
Because Christopher struggles to understand his emotions and the emotional worlds of others, his worldview and means of expression rely almost entirely on logic. Christopher’s logic-based perspective both helps and hinders him in his murder investigation, as well as in his life. In the context of the investigation, logic helps Christopher analyze his observations and draw reasonable conclusions, like the fact that Wellington was probably killed by someone who knew him, and whoever killed Wellington had a personal grievance with Mrs. Shears, which turns out to be incredibly true. Furthermore, Christopher is gifted in mathematics and physics, and he believes these proficiencies will create opportunities for him in the future, such as attending university and becoming a scientist.
The challenges that come with Christopher’s extreme dependence on logic are evident when he processes difficult information. For instance, when his father tells Christopher that his mother died of a heart attack, the only emotion Christopher reports is surprise. He’s surprised because “Mother was only 38 years old and heart attacks usually happen to older people,” so he asks his father what kind of heart attack she had. In this extremely logical response, there exists a noticeable lack of what society would consider “normal” emotional reactions, such as sadness and anger, and the effect is eerie and disconcerting to the reader, as well as to Christopher’s father, who simply remarks it is not “the moment to be asking questions like that.” Nevertheless, Christopher’s logical approach to life also provides an interesting contrast to his parents, who often behave impulsively and irrationally, according to whichever emotion they experience in the moment. Although Christopher did not have the “appropriate” response to the news of his mother’s death, he would also never become so angry at someone that he would stab their dog with a garden fork. The contrast between Christopher’s and his father’s use of emotion and logic prompts the reader to rethink society’s expectations for our behaviors.
Christopher’s goal in the novel resembles that of many teenage protagonists in coming-of-age stories: to become independent and find his role in the world. Because of his condition, Christopher cannot be as independent as he would like. Since he has trouble understanding other people, dealing with new environments, and making decisions when confronted with an overload of new information, for instance, he has difficulty going places by himself. When he feels frightened or overwhelmed, he has a tendency to essentially shut down, curling himself into a ball and trying to block out the world around him. Christopher, however, still has the typical teenage desire to do what he wants and take care of himself without anyone else telling him what to do. As a result, we see him rebelling against his father in the novel by lying and disobeying his father’s orders. We also see this desire for independence in Christopher’s dream of being one of the few people left on Earth, in which no authority figures are present, and in his planning for college, where he wants to live by himself.
Christopher’s struggle to become independent primarily involves him gaining the self-confidence needed to do things on his own and moving beyond his very rigidly defined comfort zone. Solving Wellington’s murder figures into his efforts to be independent in that it forces Christopher to speak with a number of people he doesn’t know, which he finds uncomfortable, and it gives him confidence in his ability to solve problems on his own. The A-level math test also represents an avenue to independence for Christopher. By doing well on the test, Christopher can use the test to eventually get into college, allowing him to live on his own. Finally, Christopher’s harrowing trip to London serves as his greatest step toward independence. The trip epitomizes everything Christopher finds distressing about the world, such as dealing with social interactions, navigating new environments, and feeling overloaded with information. By overcoming these obstacles, he gains confidence in his ability to face any challenge on his own.
Christopher’s condition causes him to see the world in an uncommon way, and much of the novel allows the reader to share Christopher’s unique perspective. For instance, although the novel is a murder mystery, roughly half the chapters in the book digress from this main plot to give us Christopher’s thoughts or feelings on a particular subject, such as physics or the supernatural. To take one example, he tells us about the trouble he has recognizing facial expressions and the difficulty he had as a child understanding how other people respond to a given situation, explaining his preference for being alone that we see throughout the novel. As the story progresses, the book gradually departs from the murder-mystery plot and focuses more on Christopher’s character, specifically his reaction to the revelation that his mother never died but rather left the family to live with another man while his father lied about the situation. Throughout these events, the reader typically understands more about Christopher’s situation than Christopher does. When Christopher discovers the letters from his mother hidden in his father’s closet, for example, Christopher invents different reasons to explain why a letter from his mother would be dated after her supposed death. The reader, on the other hand, may recognize immediately that his mother never died and Christopher’s father has been lying to him.
Although the reader recognizes that Christopher has an uncommon perspective of the world, the novel suggests that everyone, in fact, has a subjective point of view. By giving detailed explanations of Christopher’s thoughts, the novel allows the reader to empathize with Christopher. Moreover, by pointing out the irrational behaviors of so-called normal people, such as Christopher’s father’s habit of putting his pants on before his socks, the novel implies that Christopher’s eccentricities are actually typical to a degree. As a result, the reader is able to take on Christopher’s perspective as his own and to understand Christopher’s reasons for behaving as he does. Christopher’s point of view loses its strangeness and seems merely unique.
Christopher has an urgent need to see the world as orderly, and he has a very low tolerance for disorder. He obsesses over schedules, for instance, and even describes the difficulty he had going on vacation with his parents because they had no routine to follow. Moreover, because Christopher has such difficulty connecting to people on an emotional level, he relies heavily on order and logic to understand and navigate the world. The narration, as a result, frequently veers away from the main storyline to discuss topics, such as physics or even the rate of growth of a pond’s frog population, that have clearly defined and logical rules. When the narration moves back to Christopher’s life, the messiness of the social and emotional lives of Christopher and those around him becomes even more apparent.
Over the course of the novel, Christopher experiences a series of increasingly destabilizing events, such as learning of Mother’s affair and Father’s deceptions, revealing that Christopher’s narrow focus on order at the beginning of the novel actually keeps him—and the reader—blind to the complex tangle of relationships within his family. This disorder grows increasingly prominent as the story progresses. When Christopher leaves Swindon to find his mother in London, he becomes literally paralyzed at times by the disorder of the massive urban landscape he passes through, which symbolizes the disorder he faces in his family. The novel concludes with the various characters resolving some of their issues, but with their lives remaining essentially as untidy as ever.
Each of the major characters endures his share of loss in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. The novel opens with a death: Wellington’s murder, which prompts Christopher to think back on an earlier moment of loss in his life—the death of his mother. At the time, he coped with his mother’s death by accepting that his mother was gone and moving on, in spite of the fact that he could not say goodbye before she passed. Later, he often remembers her in his writing, sharing detailed memories of her manner of speaking, dress, and temperament. Father also copes with the loss of his wife, Christopher’s mother, though he does so by breaking off contact with her and cutting her out of his—and Christopher’s—life, telling Christopher she is dead. Father’s feelings of loss arise again when Mrs. Shears ends their relationship, and he works through his loss violently by murdering Wellington, effectively setting the events of the novel in motion. Ultimately, the book ends as it began, with a death, this time of Christopher’s pet rat, Toby. Christopher copes by acknowledging that Toby lived a very long life for a rat, and he rejoices in the arrival of a new puppy, Sandy.
Cite this page as follows:
“What is the main lesson to be learned from The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time?” eNotes Editorial, 13 Aug. 2012, https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/what-is-the-main-lesson-to-be-learned-from-the-165543. Accessed 11 Jan. 2023.
One lesson is that there are many ways to see and interpret the world and there are many ways to live a human life. Many have the idea that there is a “norm” about how we should live, and how we should relate to others. Christopher Boone exemplifies one way…
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One lesson is that there are many ways to see and interpret the world and there are many ways to live a human life. Many have the idea that there is a “norm” about how we should live, and how we should relate to others. Christopher Boone exemplifies one way to interact with the world. His descriptions about what he sees, for example his analysis of the ad for Malayasia, provide insight into the assumptions our “appropriate” worlds makes about human existence, values and truth.
Given a distressful condition, Christopher manages to relate to others and to experience the human emotions of fear, excitment, worry, courage,interest, self-satisfaction and empathy (especially for Wellington and Toby). He relates to his teacher at school and respects what she has taught him. Granted, his way of relating is not how most people experience it, but he does interact with others. At the end of the novel he is able to begin to see is father as trustworthy and to reconcile. Christopher does love his father and he learns that the ordered world he wants sometimes does not happen. Christopher has learned to begin to adapt, one of the hardest things for people with autism. And best of all, the novel ends with his hopes for his future. Christopher does not see anything wrong with himself, and this is the best lesson of all.
Christopher finds it impossible to identify with other people, and as a result lives in his own little world. The people he meets are rude and inconsiderate regarding his disability. He finds other people weird and confusing, and prefers to be on his own. His disconnection from other people is also physical, whereby he hates being touched and is even given a police caution for hitting a policeman who touched him on the arm. Additionally, the author makes Christopher stand out through his hobbies and his superstitions. He physically cannot lie, as when he thinks of one thing that might have happened instead, a million other possibilities crowd into his head and he feels overwhelmed.
Through this book, the author questions how much parenting impacts ones identity. Christopher has little understanding of “love”, and instead cares more for dogs and his pet rat Toby. He detaches himself from his parents very easily -not too bothered when describing his mums “death” and running away from his dad. He refers to them as “mother” and “father”, which aren’t very affectionate terms. Furthermore, he doesn’t realize the impact he has on other people’s relationships, as both his parents and his mum and her boyfriend split up on account of him.
There are several lessons or morals to be learned, as indirectly “stated” as they may be. One is that acceptance of others helps one find self-acceptance as well. For example, when Christopher forgives his father for having killed the neighbours dog and simulated his mothers death for the simple reason of convenience, he does not bear a grudge but accepts his fathers confession of fault. Father and son start sharing activites together which they had not done before, and Christopher learns to be more optimistic about his future, now that the shadows of an uncertain past have been dissipated.
Another lesson is that problems can be an opportunity to learn and grow. Christopher would have never ventured beyond the perimeter of his own neighbourhood had he not discovered letters from his mother and gone to London in search of her. He learns how to cope with new and unfamiliar experiences, such as riding on a train and not getting lost and finding his mother alive and well after having thought she had died at hospital.
Another theme which is an offshoot of the previously mentioned one is that a person can turn a weakness into a strength. Christophers autism makes him uncompromizingly blunt, but it his his straightforward nature which helps his father escape the snare of lies and dissimulation. Mr Boone learns to be an honest person again after a “snowball effect” of pretention.
According to the author, the purpose of this book was not to moralize but to expose the personality of a marginal type fragilized by both his handicap and his life experience. Christopher is not an endearing character, he is not loveable or even that likable, but the reader becomes “engaged” just the same. The reader lets himself, much as Alice, plunge into a world where the rules and usual code of behaviour no longer apply. He learns to “think different” and see the world from a perspective other than his own, and this is a lesson in itself.
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Fictional novels have the distinct capability to highlight and address issues to the reader which challenges societal norms. Mark Haddon’s 2003 hybrid novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time (Curious Incident) explores the perspective of an individual suffering from autism spectrum…
“A good title is the title of a successful book” (Raymond Chandler). Sadly, in this day and age, the saying that people judge a book by its cover actually lives up to its name not only with people but mostly including books. Most people first look and feast by the eyes without knowing the whole story in large. It is now becoming essential that the title of the actual novel lives up to what the story is about as for that’s what pulls people in to read the novel. As Mark Haddon says “Reading is a conversation. All the books talk. But a good book listens as well.”(Mark). This quote personally speaks to me as after I had read the “Curious Incident” I felt as if Christopher Boone (the main protagonist which suffers from Asperger’s Syndrome) spoke to me saying that even though you might not fit in, you can do anything. As for Christopher since he solved the “Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime” crime. The title sneakily relates to the theme of not being exactly perfect. Everything happens for its own reason and no one knows why. You may not be the ideal person, suffer from problems no one understands and no one knows how hard it is to communicate with people or do something as simple such as hug someone you love but you need to have a dream. Christopher had one; to become an astronaut. You may just be a curious child, and be faced with thousands of obstacles or incidents but that’s what the stories about. No one knew the murderer of the poor dog Wellington, no one might know who you are but you need to prove that even because you are different just like Christopher you still have the ability to achieve absolute greatness.
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime (2003) by Mark Haddon and The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012) by Stephen Chbosky reflects the lives of two adolescent boys, Christopher and Charlie, who are struggling to find their identity. Haddon’s text follows the…
‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time’, composed by Mark Haddon, is a prose-fiction novel narrated from the aspect of an autistic teenager, Christopher Boone. Christopher is a 15-year-old boy suffering from a condition resembling ‘Asperger’s Syndrome’ (AS), which limits his non-verbal communication…
Dr. Temple Grandin once said that; “the most interesting people you’ll find are ones that don’t fit into your average cardboard box. They’ll make what they need, they’ll make their own boxes.” Mark Haddon’s, Curious incident of the dog in the nighttime explores prevalent topics…