Curious Incident

Curious Incident

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time starts off with what the title describes. A young boy, who one later learns is autistic, comes across his neighbor, Mrs. Shears’, black poodle, Wellington. Christopher Boone, the protagonist, finds this dog with a pitchfork sticking out of its body. This sparks a long search of who the murderer of this helpless animal is. Along the way, Christopher finds out the killer is his own father who he then shuns. Christopher’s father, Ed, tries his hardest to put up with the peculiarities that are entailed by his autism. Christopher, thinking his mother is dead, finds out that she indeed is not and he runs away trying to find her. Once he finds his mother, she is overwhelmingly happy yet surprised. Christopher is also surprised as he finds Mr. Shears with his mother. He is confused and his mother explained to him that they loved one another, but no one else knew how they felt and criticized them for it. In the end, Christopher’s family problems get solved, he goes back to live with his father, who buys him a puppy to replace his best friend and rat, Toby. He then realizes that after everything he’s been through, he has the potential to be the scientist he wants to be and ends up being very optimistic about his future.
The book mainly deals with Christopher Boone. Christopher is autistic though it is never literally said. One must conclude from his behavior and the fact that he constantly mentions a Siobhan. Siobhan is his mentor and one can concur from everything Christopher mentions about her, that she helps him deal with people and social skills. It is apparent that Christopher is very passionate about math, puzzles, and memorization. Examples of this are shown through-out the books as an interactive key. Personally, I enjoyed this story greatly because of its diversity and the fact that you actually begin to understand and see through the eyes of this child.

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