The Curious Incident Analysis

The Curious Incident of the dog in the Night-Time

Ever felt annoyed, frustrated and above all alone because you are just simply different? Fifteen-year-old Christopher Boone experiences every day. Christopher struggles every day due to his autism, his problems include troubles understanding and communicating. Despite these deficits, Christopher is able to problem solve and deal with his problems.

Firstly, Christopher has many difficulties understanding people. He cannot understand what people mean, why they say things and why they do things. This is first seen in the novel when Christopher’s father told him to stay out of trouble and stop investigating Wellingtons murder. Christopher states, “Also I don’t know what father means when he

This leads to Christopher being very isolated and anti-social. In the novel, Christopher found a dog dead and ran towards it. The policemen ran towards Christopher and began to question him. The policemen said “I am going to ask you once again, I rolled back onto the lawn and pressed my forehead to the ground again and made the noise that father calls groaning. I make this noise when there is too much information coming into my head from the outside world.” [pg. 7] Christopher problem solved by rolling over and clearing his mind and after was able to answer the police officer’s questions. This proves that Christopher although struggles can power through and problem solve. He can find a better way to answer to his problems. In the novel, Christopher also shows that he struggles with communication but can handle it. For example, when he talks to Mrs. Alexander, as the conversation gets deeper Mrs. Alexander suggests talking in a different place. Christopher explains how he feels through this quotation, “I was nervous. I did not know Mrs. Alexander. I knew that she was an old lady and that she liked dogs. But she was a stranger. And I never go into the park on my own because it is dangerous.” [pg. 59] This shows that although Christopher struggles with communicating to others he has a way of handling it. He seems to handle it by not talking to strangers, this

For example, when Christopher was trying to find the train station he made a map in his head to work out how to find it. Christopher stated “I made a plan. I knew that the train station was somewhere near. And if something is nearby you can find it by moving in a spiral, walking clockwise and taking every right turn until you come back to a road you’ve already walked on” [pg. 140] Christopher was having troubles finding the train station and solved his problem by making a visual image in his head of how to get there. When Christopher was in the train station he was trying to read the signs to look for his destination but when he tried to read it all he read was letters, numbers…. For example, a part in the book when Christopher is reading, “‘the reef café bar business travel special edition TOP 75 ALBUMS Evening Standard’ But after a few seconds they looked like this ‘aspecitionTOP7UMSEvedard.’” This shows that because of his autism he was having troubles reading which resulted in him not knowing where to go. To solve this issues Christopher says, “And then I made my hand into a little tube with my fingers and I opened my eyes and I looked through the tube so that I was only looking at one sign at a time and after a long time I saw a sign that said Information.” [pg. 169] Christopher finds a solution to his problem by turning his focus to only one sign at a time and taking things