The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time

Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time explores different perspectives through language and stylistic features by presenting us with a 15-year-old protagonist dealing with Asperger’s syndrome, Christopher Boone, and his logical profound personality. We learn about the world Christopher knows and understands via the narration style with detailed diagrams and unsentimental writing. Language is explored through the narrator’s perspective, (Christopher), which allows recognition in the differences between the reader and narrator, and other characters involved in Christopher’s life.

Christopher’s perspective is explored within the novel through technique such as the differentiation between the characters, and the use of

Majority of Mothers presence in the novel is grasped from Christopher’s memory, and because of his lack of emotional empathy and language, the reader is shown her bad qualities, therefore questioning her capability as a parent. She often becomes frustrated with her son’s routines and behaviour and takes it out on him but is quick to become apologetic for blaming him. Christopher’s flashbacks as the narrator, include his reminiscence using a narrative writing style; the situations that occurred incorporated actions with definite and logical beginnings and endings. During a flashback Christopher quotes his mother during a fight with his father, “Jesus Christopher, I am seriously considering putting you in a home. You are going to drive me into an early grave.” (73) This segment shows the struggle Mother went through while raising Chris and the influence it had on him in terms of understanding love and the meaning behind it. The way Mother is portrayed to us solely through the flashbacks creates a reputation of her character, and that her and Father’s way of showing Christopher love is inappropriate which builds up an initial perception, again questioning their parenting

Emotional technique is included and used to alter the readers perspective of Mother through the introduction of her own voice, allowing us to have a separate look at her character without Christopher’s unreliable aspect. This is evident when Chris discovers the letters his mother has been leaving him, the first one coming from eighteen months after she ‘died’. For example, while Christopher is reading, one of the segments from her third letter says, “I was not a very good mother, Christopher. Maybe if things had been differant, maybe if you’d been differant, I might have been better at it.” (133) From this sentence alone the audience is able to establish that Mothers portrayal throughout the beginning of the novel was potentially misleading. Despite her poor sense of grammar, possible lack of education, and ability to recognise her faults in the way she raised her son, her previous representation is questionable due to Christopher’s literal perspective; the reader has only seen her bad side through the lack of pathos language. Christopher’s desire for the truth to be unfolded restricts him from admiring the value of symbolism within stories, hence when we are introduced to Judy (Mother) the sudden alternation between emotional and unemotional language confirms the original deceptive perspective and shows the reader she is attempting to