The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (ISBN 0099450259) is a novel by Mark Haddon. The title is a quotation of a remark made by the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes in Arthur Conan Doyle's 1893 short story, "Silver Blaze".
The story is written in the first-person narrative of Christopher Boone, a 15-year-old boy living in Swindon, UK.
Contents |
Main character
Christopher goes to a school for children with "special needs". Although there is no explicit mention of it in the book, the publisher's blurb on the back cover says that he has Asperger's syndrome, a form of "high-functioning" autism. He is a mathematical genius (a skill that sets him apart from other students and even most adults), has a remarkable photographic memory and is incredibly observant. He can also recite the world's capital cities.
Plot
Christopher discovers the dead body of his neighbour's dog (named Wellington), speared by a garden fork, and decides to investigate. However, he is severely limited by his own fears and difficulties when interpreting the world around him. Throughout all his adventures, Christopher writes of his experiences in the form of a book, and its title is The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time.
During his investigation into Wellington's demise, Christopher meets people whom he has never before encountered (even though they live on the same street). He eventually discovers that Mr Shears, who used to inhabit the house opposite, had an affair with his mother, whom he believes to be dead, as his father had explained that she died of a heart attack. He chronicles this and other discoveries, and his father becomes angry with him when he eventually discovers the book and its contents. He hides it and forbids Christopher to continue his investigation.
In his search for the hidden book, Christopher discovers a series of letters from his mother, dated after she allegedly died — which his father had also concealed. Christopher concludes that she is still alive and that his father had lied to him. At this point, his father admits that he killed the dog. He states that he did so because after Christopher's mother left, Mrs Shears took care of both of them and moved in, but he was angry at her for putting Wellington above him and Christopher. Following a heated argument, Christopher's father destroyed the animal. Christopher then fears that his father may also try to do away with him, and so he embarks on an adventurous journey to London, where his mother lives.
Literary techniques used in the novel
Haddon weaves into the book several concepts from contemporary research and theory on autism. For instance, one incident described is in fact a recreation of a famous experiment regarding theory of mind. The book's narrator Christopher is gifted at and focused on mathematics, and this is reflected by his inclusion of several famous puzzles of math and logic. The book's appendix comprises a reproduction of a question from an A-level examination for which the protagonist sits, with annotated answers within the text. The book also includes the extremely unlikely incident of seeing four yellow cars in a row, an event which holds significance to the narrator, who has an aversion to yellow (and brown). The inclusion of these details establishes character and supports Haddon's conceit that the book is actually written by Christopher himself.
The narrator's mathematical interests are also reflected in his numbering his chapters strictly with prime numbers, ignoring composite numbers such as 4 and 6. So the first is Chapter 2, followed by 3, then 5, 7, 11 and so on. Throughout the book, they also alternate as to their general content: Chapter 2 is about the unfolding story, Chapter 3 explores some aspect of the narrator's inner life not necessarily directly relevant to the immediate action, Chapter 5 returns to the narrative, etc. Another unusual method used to emphasise the different perceptions of the world experienced by people with autism is the switching between fonts and using long, run-on sentences when describing the surroundings. Thus the book's overall structure as well as its content support the literary conceit that what we are reading is a novel penned by the autistic narrator Christopher rather than the author Mark Haddon. This general technique of fictional autobiography was exploited by the writer Daniel Defoe in what is regarded as the first novel in English, Robinson Crusoe.
In some ways Christopher may be regarded as an unreliable narrator, although in other ways his narration is very precise and reliable with regard to objective facts. For example, in one scene Christopher is nearly killed by an oncoming train as he retrieves his pet rat, who has scampered onto the tracks of the London Underground. Through his narration we see the scene unfold completely, but he himself remains totally unaware of the danger he is in, and of the closeness of his brush with death. (This is also an example of dramatic irony, in which the audience [or in this case, the reader] understands more about a situation than the character in the situation does.)