Commentary of Chapter 31 of "The Curious Incident of a Dog"

Commentary of Chapter 31 of "The Curious Incident of a Dog"

  • Submitted By: madspot
  • Date Submitted: 02/23/2009 2:44 PM
  • Category: English
  • Words: 1188
  • Page: 5
  • Views: 642

Christopher begins the chapter with the sentence: ‘It was 1:12 a.m. when Father arrived at the police station’. He replicates the exact time of the situation, being very precise. He also introduces his dad with the word “Father”, being more represented by a proper noun than a common noun, this showing a level of respect and formality, making the reader think that perhaps the relationship between father and son is not very intimate and caring.

Immediately Chris continues to inform about what his father said: ‘He was shouting: ‘I want to see my son,’ and ‘Why the hell is he locked up?’ and, ‘Of course I’m bloody angry’. Instead of narrating about what his father said using more complex sentences, Chris makes a syndetic listing repeating the exact same sentences used by his father, but without adding any exclamation marks that could outstand the tone of his father; more than replicating a scene, he gives us information about the events, with no purpose of making the novel entertaining or funny in any way (as he explains previously in the book).

Even where there is no use of exclamation marks, it is implied that the protagonist’s father is having strong feelings, as he uses mild expletives such as ‘bloody’ and ‘why the hell’, indicating that the characters feels rather furious or offended, showing at the same time an infuriating personality deserving of a strong figure, implicitly understood by the reader as Christopher tells that he ‘heard a policeman telling him to calm down’ and also by the word ‘Father’.

Later Christopher says: ‘At 1:28 a.m. a policeman opened the door of the cell and told me that there was someone to see me’. This compound sentence is in itself a redundancy of information that the reader already knows about, as Christopher previously explained in the first paragraph of the chapter that he couldn’t see his father until 1:28 a.m. This repetition demonstrates Christopher’s autistic’s state, as he doesn’t know how to use correctly the...

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