Literary Essay on The Curious Incident of The Dog in the Night Time
Joseph Petrini
802
ELA
In the book The Curious Incident of The Dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon, a boy named Chris with a disability learns to overcome his fears. The main character Chris has to decide whether or not to leave his old life so he can feel safe or stay with his own world and face his father, who killed the neighbors dog. Christopher doesn't know what to do. His only motivation is himself and his pet rat, because of this he can’t make a weighted decision. The Curious Incident of The Dog in the Night Time brings the idea of interaction being essential to the thriving of a species. This is shown through the hardships of Chris. Chris is confused because he lacks positive human interaction, so he creates distractions that neutralize his fear and confusion.
Chris is a very confused character. For example, one quote that really shows his confusion is, while he is still in shock over what his father did, he starts functioning irregularly. “Mother explained that I was upset because I couldn’t do my maths A level so I hadn’t been eating or sleeping properly. Then mother went away and I drew a picture of a bus using perspective so that I didn’t think about the pain in my chest.”(210-211) In this scene the mother tells him that he is so upset that he isn’t following his instincts correctly. Another scene that shows his confusion is, “I had to get out of the house. Father had murdered Wellington. That meant he could murder me, because I couldn’t trust him, even though he said ‘trust me’ ”(122) Christopher second guesses himself in this scene, that shows he doesn't know what to think of his father. Christopher is very unsure character.
Christopher lacks positive connections with other people. For example, when he is running away from home he doesn’t think about leaving anybody behind when he goes to London. Another example of Christopher's lack of positive connection is when he is leaving to go to London but he only thinks about what to do with his pet rat,Toby, and not about anybody else. “ ‘can’t you take Toby with you?’ ...’Londons a long way and I don’t want to take him because I might lose him’.” This shows how much he loves his pet rat and can interact with it in a human way. Christopher has an insufficiency of genuine relationships.
Christopher creates distractions for himself to escape from his
problems. An example of this is, when Christopher is doing math and can’t do it because he is too upset so he feels like just lashing out at someone,”So I took deep breaths like Siobhan said I should do when I felt like I want to hit someone in school and I counted 50 breathes and did cubes of the cardinal numbers as I counted.”(213) In this scene Christopher is really upset so he uses math to distract himself . Another example of Christopher’s distractions is when he is on the train on the way to London to stay with his mother he does puzzles in his head, “it is a good maths problem to do in your head when you want to think of something else because you can make it as complicated as you need to fill your brain”(147) He does complicated puzzles in his head to detract himself from his problems. Christopher will also assume to a new identity to relax himself. For example, “I like Sherlock Holmes and I think that if I were a proper detective he is the kind of detective I would be”(73) In this case Chris escapes to the false identity of a detective to hide from the shock of Wellington, the dog, being killed. Christopher hides from his problems by making distractions so he doesn’t have to confront them.
Christopher is a very confused character. He is confused because he has an absence of positive connections. This brings up the idea of the explicit need for connection. Mark Haddon shows through this book that people thrive on human empathy and without it you become introverted and withdrawn from your community. Christopher creates distractions for himself so he doesn’t have to make decisions because he is scared of the consequences of a bad decision. Christopher is confused because he lacks the capacity to other people, so he creates distractions that relieve the consequences of his confusion.
