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Personal reflection on communication skills
Conclusion on the effective communication skills
Personal reflection on communication skills
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RJ Martinez
Beth Beecham
02 October 2017
Eng 32255
Conflicts for Christopher The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, written by Mark Haddon, is about a kid with autism and the conflicts he deals with throughout the book. Christopher is an autistic kid that can not deal with serious situations as normal as the average person. The protagonist, Christopher Boone, has gone through conflicts that make him reevaluate his life. His life has been turned upside down when learning that his father has been keeping secrets from him. The biggest conflict is when Christopher is investigating the murder of Wellington, this leads him to a various number of secrets that his parents have kept from him, this is a major part of the story because
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Meanwhile, Mr. Boone is in conflict with himself because he does not like to lie to his son, he is the better parent because he is more patient with Christopher and only wants the best for him. However, he has a guilty conscience because he did not tell Christopher at first about killing the dog and he felt that he should not lie to Christopher. Mr. Booner does not like telling Christopher a lie because he feels terrible about it. Christopher explains “ I could see him out of the corner of my eye. And[sic] he said I killed Wellington Christopher” (Haddon 120). Christopher did not understand at first he was confused if it was a joke or not but then he figured out that his father was not joking and he was very serious. Christopher did not know how to respond to this because of his autism he is not very good at dealing with serious situations and has a tough time with this. His autism doesn’t let him fully grasp what is being said to him all at once He needs to analyze it and understand what is happening, He is scared so he sleeps in the backyard because he is terrified his father will kill him too. This is due to his irrational thinking of things because of his autism. Christopher has a hard time dealing with this because he can not process things as fast as the average person. Mr. Boone also has a hard time dealing with this because he is uncertain of how his son will …show more content…
First he leaves his father to go find his mom and ends up staying with her for a short time and then she realizes that she is not capable of taking care of Christopher. So then Judy, Christopher’s mother, and Christopher move back to Swindon and reunite with his father. Then when she finally get Christopher to come over his father gets to talk for five minutes and he brings in the puppy from the other room. The puppy represents the father trying to regain the trust of his son. One night, when the mother was sick, Christopher has to stay with the father. Christopher feels safe because Sandy, the new puppy, was sleeping with him. Knowing that the father wouldn't try to come in because if he did Sandy would bark and it would wake Christopher up. The father is wanting the son to come back and live with him. Since the mother isn’t the idea caretaker and even blames it on him. Blaming most of things on Christopher by stating “Maybe if things were different, maybe if you were different, I might have been better at it” (Haddon 106). Judy is blaming most things that happen on Christopher, when she couldn’t handle things that were going on with the family. When conflict arises for jud she leaves and goes away to have Mr. Boone take care of the situation because he knows how to treat him the best. Mr. Boone realized after she left that if he told Christopher what happened that he wouldn’t fully understand why
In the book, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon, I claim that Ed Boone, Christopher's father, was justified in lying to him about the death of his mother. Despite the fact that he lied to him about something critical, he did so with the best intentions.
Ed Boone, Christopher’s father, deceives himself in that he embellishes the truth about where his ex-wife truly is. As a result, Ed begins to believe the fabrication himself to make him feel better about her departure from their lives. Self-deception, as used in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, promotes the instability that Christopher encounters after being deceived. According to Paul Ekman in Lying and Deception, “Self-deception presumably occurs when the deceiver does not realize he is misleading himself and does not know his own motive for deceiving himself.” Granted that Ed Boone misleads himself he may not even recognize that he is deceiving himself. Not only did Christopher’s Father create a distortion of the truth to mislead himself, but he also mislead Christopher. Consequently, Christopher believed his mother to be dead, but in reality, she had abandoned them. In Mr. Boone’s account with self-deception, he doesn’t realize that the deception could potentially hurt those he had lied to due to his moral implications fading. According to Ann E. Tenbrunsel in Ethical Fading: The Role of Self-Deception in Unethical Behavior, “We argue that the process of self-deception is at the root of this juncture of disciplines. Self-deception causes the moral implications of a decision to fade, allowing individuals to behave incomprehensibly and, at the same time, not realize that they are
Christopher abnormally obsesses over everything in his life. This is due to his severe OCD, which he struggles with throughout the novel. Likewise, Christopher’s OCD is depicted as a reaction to the lack of control over his environment. He copes with situations he cannot control by looking for various details within his life that bring him peace-of-mind him. For instance, before the policemen arrive at the crime scene of the murder of the Poodle, he felt tense and anxious caused by Mrs. Shears’s neurotic behavior in reaction to viewing Christopher peer over her dead dog. Later, when the police arrive to investigate the crime scene, Christopher feels a surge of comfort because the policeman is a representation (in Christopher’s mind) of order. When the police arrived Christopher thought: “Then the police arrived. I like the police. They have uniforms and
At the beginning of the book, Christopher had thought that his dad would never hurt anything or anyone. Christopher had thought that his dad was a great person, and that he would never do anything wrong. This turned out to be not true. His father denied killing the dog multiple times, but he did admit to doing the act.“I killed Wellington, Christopher.”(p.120) Wellington is their neighbor’s dog. From this quote...
When Christopher finds Wellington dead on Mrs. Shears’ front lawn, he picks up the dog and strokes it. Christopher is determine to find out who killed Wellington because he likes dogs. Father tells Christopher to leave the dog alone and do not poke into other people’s business. But Christopher has to find out who killed him, thus he decides not to listen to father and go find out and investigate Wellington’s murder. Christopher’s courage began to show when one Saturday, he decides to go around his block and ask questions. Christopher does not like to be around people he does not know and he is scared of some of the people on his block, but he faces his fears--not out of fear, but because he knew it was something he had to do. Christopher mentions that talking to people on his block was brave. He knows what courage is and he knows that he has to be brave. Notice how Ch...
The novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time explores the concept of truth and lies through the eyes of Christopher, the main character, who has autism. His narrative perspective only allows the reader to understand what his own mind is capable of understanding such as his views on lying, facial
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time exhibits real life situations experienced by an autistic, 15-year-old boy, from his own panorama. Christopher’s use of first person perspective ensures that his view on events are explained with accurate, detailed description, enhancing the responders understanding of how the mind of one with Asperger’s syndrome functions. This concept is elaborated on in Christopher’s struggle to become independent as the responder is able to grasp Christopher’s defensive mechanisms to dealing with stressful situations. Christopher narration “so I groaned to make the time pass quicker and not think” during a fit where his tendency to shut down and curl himself into a ball is essentially revealed substantiates his struggle to become independent as his
While trust is a somewhat common theme in modern novels, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime manages to portray how it affects people in their day to day lifestyle. The book tells the story of Christopher Boone a young boy with autism and his murder mystery novel about the murder of his neighbor's dog. Why this novel is significant is because Mark Haddon tells the story that many young people with autism, like Christopher, live everyday and who’s view on life and the idea of trust and understanding of the world is drastically different than any teenager.
Anger is one of the hardest emotions to control. Often, people hold it in, allowing it to build until it bursts, causing damage. In Mark Haddon’s novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, the parents of a child with autism struggle to keep their cool around their son. Christopher’s mother fails to mask her emotions around her son, leaving his father to take care of him. Although his father tries to maintain calm, he often yells at Christopher as his son watches on in careful concentration. Haddon’s authorial choice of making Christopher’s parents lash out reveals irony in that Christopher is the one with the disorder yet is calm, analyzing situations objectively.
Christopher Boone is a 15 year old male young-adult, of British descent. Christopher describes himself as a machine, We have reports of him saying “I sometimes think of my mind as a machine” (Haddon 7). Christopher is currently living with his mother, who has asked not be named, and his father, Edward Boone. Christopher comes from Swindon,UK, where he was born and grew up, until the divorce of his parents were his mom moved away with Roger Shears (Christopher’s former neighbor and ex-husband of his father's former girlfriend). Christopher Boone suffers from many behavioral/emotional problems such as being irritable, unstable, and not talk to people for a long time. He also has problems like not eating or drinking for long periods of time and refusal to being touched. Christopher is currently in High School, enrolled in Level A math. Christopher’s father, Ed Boone, has been renowned for killing his neighbor's dog, Wellington. On page 1, (at midnight) Christopher walks into the neighbor's backyard after looking out his window to see Wellington stabbed with a pitchfork. Christopher says “I stroked Wellington and wondered who had killed him, and why”. Christopher cared deeply for Wellington, and loved dogs. We have a hypothesis that Christopher had abandonment issues after his mother leaving. Christopher’s trust in his father diminished, but after buying Christopher his own puppy, he started to gain Christophers trust back (“he bent down and put his hands inside the box and he took a little sandy-colored dog out”) (Haddon 219). Christopher also tends to perform poorly in social situations/a school environment. Some examples would be; not interacting with other kids, getting bullied, and acting aggressively when being touched. Some of ...
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time is told through the eyes of a fifteen year old boy named Christopher Boone. Christopher has a highly-functioning form of autism which allows him to understand complex mathematical problems, but also leaves him unable to comprehend many simple human emotions. His inability to understand metaphors, distinguish emotions, and his lack of imagination makes it possible to consider Christopher as functioning like a computer rather than functioning as a human being. Throughout the story, Christopher is faced with many challenges which he conquers using the stable and never changing system of mathematics. All of these factors suggest that Christopher does, in fact, function like a computer, but it is apparent early in the story that Christopher, regardless of anything else, is capable of independent thought which separates him from the programmed, dependent world of computers.
Every individual's mind functions in a different and unique way. We all have idiosyncratic behaviours and functions. These distinctive characteristics are what make us who we are. But not all neurological differences help us in our day -to-day lives. Every individual also possess some psychological defects. These issues are clearly portrayed in the novel, The curious incident of the dog in the night-time by Mark Haddon. In this story the protagonist is an autistic boy who faces many challenges in his life. Both his parents also face some complications in coping up with their son. Therefore the central theme in the novel, the curious incident of the dog in the night-time, delineated by Christopher (the autistic boy), the father, and the mother, is that everyone has psychological problems that they need to overcome.
How far would a parent go to ensure the comfort of their child? What if the child had a mental disability? Children with autism can be difficult to deal with and it can be easy to misconstrue a parent’s intentions toward their disabled child. According to Petra Kuppers’s essay “Dancing Autism: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime and Bedlam,” an autistic child has a, “distanced view of the rules that make up love, relationships, need, and care,” and therefore can be more challenging to raise (Kuppers 193). Christopher is one such example of an autistic child. In Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Christopher’s father is portrayed in a negative light, but actually proves himself to be an outstanding father.
The curious incident of the dog in the night time was narrated in first person by Christopher Boone however If it was narrated in third person the audience would not have understood the way Christopher was feeling. Communication, Social Interactions, Relationship’s and Christopher’s Autism spectrum disorder were some of the main areas expressed in the novel.
The Curious Incident of the dog in the night-time will take you on a ride of emotions as Christopher John Francis Boone fights through his autism to prove his innocence to everyone and himself as well. A story of a young boy on a mission to find out who killed his neighbor's dog, but while on the journey he reveals secrets about his family that was kept from him all these years. Mark Haddon did an amazing job on showing how the truth can affect someone in the text, not only the main character Christopher, but the others as well utilizing Characterization.