Christopher describes his memory as like a film, attesting to the inerrancy of such a medium. After all, what is captured on film is captured exactly as it was in the moment, without any filter. Just how accurate is Christopher’s memory, really? It’s clear that he remembers very minute details. Dialogue is presented unmoderated. No matter the subject matter, Christopher will dutifully reproduce any and all that was said in a conversation, and his inner reactions to it. Any misconceptions he has are readily obvious, owing to this detail. Instead of focusing on all the detail he is able to take in, it is important, then, to look at the information he misses. To further the film analogy, we cannot see into the minds of those who are on screen. However, while neurotypicals can’t say they know exactly what is going on in the heads of others, they can certainly make inferences based any number of clues—posture, speech, minute facial expressions. For Christopher, this isn’t the case. He is uninterested in the inner workings of the people he interacts with. If their emotion is recorded in his memory, it is only because they have made it obvious through their “on-screen” actions—nothing short of shouting “I am angry” will suffice. Christopher cannot infer, he can only record. A neurotypical actively takes part in their memory. Christopher watches it robotically.
The Horror of Autism?
Christopher’s father had made him promise to stop investigating the death of Wellington, but, due to the curious way in which Christopher’s mind works, he had found a sort of loophole in the promise. Christopher lists five parts to the promise on page 56.
1. Not to mention Mr. Shears’s name in our house.
2. Not to go asking Mrs. Shears about who killed that bloody dog.
3. Not to go asking anyone about who killed that bloody dog.
4. Not to go trespassing in other people’s gardens.
5. To stop this ridiculous bloody detective game.
Asking about Mr. Shears, he reasons, was not any of these, and so he talks to Mrs. Alexander about Mr. Shears. During the course of the conversation, Christopher learns the reason why his father doesn’t like Mr. Shears. It turns out Mr. Shears was having an affair with Christopher’s mother, and this, Mrs. Alexander says is “why your father thinks that Mr. Shears is an evil man.” It is for this reason, she goes on, that Christopher shouldn’t go around talking about him.
In Patricia Schultheis’ review of the book, below she mentions that Christopher’s world of logic can be chilling to the reader. She mention’s the “horrors” of autism.
http://muse.jhu.edu.proxy2.cl.msu.edu/journals/missouri_review/v027/27.2schultheis.html
Her review, though it does mention the humor that can be found in the novel, suggests a very dark reading of the book. It’s in this chapter where I am tempted to agree with her. Christopher learns of his mother’s infidelity with the same lack of emotion that that he might learn a new math equation. Or, a saddening thought, it is possible that he might experience more emotion with the new math equation.
Faces, People, and Emotion
Page thirty-six begins Christopher’s investigation, and is the point in the novel where Christopher has the most interaction with the people around, at least as far as talking to them is concerned. He speaks with four of his neighbors, and tellingly, never describes their faces. We learn early on that Christopher has trouble deciphering facial expressions, and as a result, we are left to guess at their reaction to Christopher’s questioning based solely on their dialogue. The nuance that accompanies facial expression is lost on him. In fact, emotion is something that does not often appear in the novel, unless they are Christopher’s emotions. Page forty-nine gives us an example of how Christopher notices the emotional state of others. He says “I could see that Father was angry with me.” The words he uses are important, but all the words he does not use are more so. He does not describe the mouth we can imagine was twisted with anger. He doesn’t describe the tone of voice, or the furrowed brow. His description of the dialogue is similarly lifeless.
Page 19
On this page, Christopher explains that he does not tell lies. For this reason, as we find out earlier, he does not like metaphors, because “a pig is not like a day and people do not have skeletons in their cupboards,” and “imagining an apple in someone’s eye doesn’t have anything to do with liking someone a lot.” (15) The act of lying is almost painful to Christopher, as a result of how his mind works. He states that lying is “saying something happened which didn’t happen.” Only one thing ever happens at a time, and as such, there are an infinite number of things that didn’t happen. Lying, says Christopher, makes him think about all of those things that didn’t happen, and it is overwhelming. We know then, that this book’s contents are true, at least as far as Christopher is concerned.
Time Out!
We can, at this point in the novel, infer that Christopher is not a “normal” child, or what Ian Hacking in his essay, linked below calls a “neurotypical.”
The “groaning,” his answers to the police officer, and his hyper analytical reaction to the scene of Wellington the poodle’s murder all hint at a difference. We are never actually told what makes Christopher different, or atypical. To anyone with some knowledge of neurological disorders, though, and to Ian Hacking, it is clear that young Christopher is somewhere on the autistic spectrum. The idea of writing a novel with an autistic character as the protagonist, or even in a side role is a recent development. The disorder itself is a recent discovery. Its actual medical classification came only within the last sixty years, and it is only very recently that it can be diagnosed with any certainty, and with the advent of the internet, autistic people are only now really being able to express themselves. Hacking says that it’s because of this tie between the internet and a broader awareness of autism that novels like Haddon’s can come about and succeed.
Page 8
On page eight, we are again told in no uncertain terms some “fact” about the novel. Where before it was that we were reading a murder mystery, on page eight it is that this will not be a funny book. It would not be quite right to say that this novel is a murder mystery, (There is a murder, it is mysterious, but this novel isn’t really about the murder.) It is outright wrong to say that this novel is not funny. Certainly, it deals with some very serious issues, and at times is deeply emotional, but it is in the end, a lighthearted story.
The First Pages
This reading blog uses the May 2004 Vintage Contemporaries version of the book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Any page numbers will refer to this version.
The novel begins on chapter two, and thus starts us off with one of the many quirks of our protagonist. The chapters are numbered by prime numbers, in sequence. It also begins with the aftermath of a murder, the description of which of is our introduction to another quirk – our protagonist is hyper analytical. This will be one of the sources of unintentional humor (Or is it intentional?) in the novel. “I decided the dog was probably killed by the fork because I could not see any other wounds in the dog and I do not think you would stick a garden fork into a dog after it had died for some other reason, like cancer, for example, or a road accident. But I could not be certain about this.” This novel, ostensibly a murder mystery (We are told on the fourth page, in no uncertain terms that this is so, and in the blurb on the back are told that this is the “improbable story of Christopher’s quest to investigate the suspicious death of a neighborhood dog.”) is not quite as it seems. The meat of the story will not be in the investigation itself, but in the interactions that Christopher has with the people around him, and with his environment.