Curious Incident

Despite Christopher’s difficulties and disabilities, it is the parent’s actions we do not understand. To what extent do you agree?

In Richard Haddon’s novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, the main character and narrator, Christopher Boone, suffered from aspergers syndrome which is a form of Autism. This caused many of his actions to seem impractical and we do not understand why he acts this way, but it also caused him to act in the most basic and simple of human ways. Christopher’s parents on the other hand did not suffer from autism, or any other kind of disability yet we still do not understand their actions.

Many of Christopher’s actions we observe throughout the novel are difficult to explain and understand. Firstly his days are dependent on the colour of the cars he sees pass by while he is on the bus. Red cars make good days while yellow cars make it bad days, on good days Christopher acts normally, on black days Christopher sits alone, doesn’t talk to anyone and doesn’t eat. His school psychologists also said it was an illogical way to act and think. Christopher also doesn’t eat food which are coloured yellow or brown. His reasoning for this was a list of foods, people and items which he doesn’t like are also coloured brown and yellow. Because of this he doesn’t eat or like to touch things that are brown or yellow. Lastly Christopher does not like to be touched or busy and full environments. When he is touched he screams and hits people and when he was in the train station he started to moan because it was too busy. ‘But I started screaming in the car because there were too many people in it…’Pg. 196 (Haddon)

Whilst we do not understand some of Christopher’s actions, we understand many of his other actions perfectly well. Christopher wanted to