Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Nighttime Analysis

“It was 7 minutes after midnight. The dog was lying on the grass in the middle of the lawn in front of Mrs.Shears's house.” The way an author narrates their book is a very important factor in the reader’s understanding. The book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon is narrated in first person by a 15 year old autistic boy named Christopher Boone. Having the book narrated by an autistic boy is not a good idea because readers can understand some situations better than Christopher could, he has trouble determining how others feel and he’s always explaining things he doesn’t understand, but most readers do. Christopher is an inadequate narrator which frustrates the readers.

First of all, Christopher shouldn’t have

been the narrator of the book because has trouble understanding certain situations. Readers find Christopher clueless in most situations because they understand more than he does and this frustrates them. For example, he couldn’t put together that his mother, Judy, left him and his father, Ed because she was having an affair with their next door neighbour Mr. Shears. In the book, Christopher’s mother disappears one day and when he asks his father where she went, he says, “Your mother has had to go into hospital.” Ed also tells Christopher, “No. It's an ordinary hospital. She has a problem. . . a problem with her heart,” when he asks if his mother is in a psychiatric hospital. Since Christopher has autism, he didn’t pick up that his mother left because she had an affair. Whereas the readers could put together the little clues to come to the conclusion that his mother left him. When Ed says Judy has a heart problem the readers realize that he’s referring to how Judy can’t love them because she loves someone else. Another example of when Christopher had trouble understanding a situation is when he found out his father lied about where his mother is. Christopher found a box of letters from his mother in his father’s closet. The letters explain why she left him and his father. When Christopher’s father realizes he knew what had happened, he comes out and tells the truth. Even though his father explained, Christopher doesn’t understand why he would tell him his mother is dead when she isn’t. The readers can easily understand why his father would lie in this situation – so that Christopher doesn’t get hurt by this.
Secondly, Christopher has trouble determining how other people are feeling which may cause readers to feel disconnected with the other characters. “Sometimes, a narrator is unreliable due to youth or naïveté.” Since Christopher is autistic, there are many things he doesn’t understand so he just tells the story the way he understands the world. This requires the readers to make more inferences. Readers find it frustrating that they only know how Christopher feels most of the time and if they want to know how other characters are feeling, they have to make a lot of inferences. Towards the beginning of the book, Christopher talks about how he keeps a sheet of paper in his pocket with emotions drawn on it. He uses this when he talks to people to determine what emotion they’re feeling. Even with this sheet, he finds it difficult to know what people are feeling. Another time when readers had to infer what a character was feeling is when Christopher says, “And then he looked at the ceiling of the train and he put his hands together in front of his mouth like people do when they are praying to God in heaven and he breathed really loudly into his hands.” He doesn’t tell the readers what the man was feeling so the readers had to assume the man was feeling annoyed.

Lastly, Christopher explains things that most readers already know.

He will explain things that he doesn’t understand or simple things like a lie. For example he explains, “The word metaphor means carrying something from one place to another.” And goes on to give the readers examples of metaphors. Christopher tells the readers about how he doesn’t understand metaphors and how it should be called a lie instead. He says, “I think it should be called a lie because a pig is not like a day and people do not have skeletons in their cupboards.” Most readers already know what a metaphor is and don’t want to read a whole page explaining what it is. Christopher also explains, “A lie is when you say something happened which didn't happen.” Again, most readers already know what a lie is and find it frustrating to have the narrator constantly explain things to them that they already know. It seems frustrating because Christopher uses up at least one page every time to explain things to the reader that he doesn’t understand, but most readers already do. This frustrates the reader and makes them feel like their time is being wasted. It makes the reader want to stop reading the book because Christopher doesn’t understand a lot of things so he has to do a lot of

explaining.

Christopher Boone is an incompetent narrator who frustrates his readers. Since Christopher has trouble understanding many situations, determining other people’s feelings, and constantly explains things readers already understands, he should not have been the narrator.