Christopher Boone

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Summary In his novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon begins the novel out by providing us details and information about Christopher Boone. Christopher is the novel’s protagonist who is a young autistic boy who lives with his father in Swindon. Christopher found his neighbor’s dog, Wellington, dead with a garden fork inside of him. The dog belongs to Mrs. Shears. The police arrived at Mrs. Shears’ house and questioned Christopher about the incident with the dog. Christopher and the policeman got into an altercation and this led to Christopher hitting the policeman. Christopher’s actions resulted in him going to jail. The objective in the novel was for Christopher to find out who murdered Wellington. He began …show more content…
Christopher’s father found the book about Christopher’s plan to found out who murdered Wellington and he took the book away from Christopher. One day when Christopher got out of school, he searched through his father’s closet for his book and found numerous of letters. Christopher found letters that were written by his supposedly dead mother and he found out that she was still alive. His mother lived in London with Mr. Shears. Christopher found out that his father killed Wellington and he decided that he was going to run away to London to live with his mother. Mullan described Christopher as an inadequate narrator in his review. Christopher is characterized as a narrator who reports on events, but he does not fully understand what is really going on. He has a difficult time understanding a person’s mood by their facial expression. Basically, he does not understand people’s emotions and what causes people to be happy, sad, or angry: “He lacks understanding of people’s emotions, although he doggedly records their symptoms” (Mullan paragraph 2). In Haddon’s novel, he described a young boy’s life who has to cope with autism and the loss of a complete family. The implicit message that the author presented through the novel was that the dealing with absence of a parent can lead to a family becoming …show more content…
Christopher acted a certain way when he was touched or someone yelled at him. For example, when the policeman arrived at Mrs. Shears’ house, Christopher reacted violently to the police touching him. Christopher said, “The policeman took hold of my arm and lifted me onto my feet. I didn’t like him touching me like this. And this is when I hit him” (Haddon 8). Christopher was not able to function whenever someone was yelling at him or hitting him. He told his father about what Mrs. Alexander told him about the affairs. In response, Christopher’s father got really angry. His father grabbed him aggressively and Christopher attacked him. Christopher said, “But Father didn’t let go, and he was shouting. And I hit him again” (Haddon 83). He decided to leave from his father, because of what his father has done. Christopher has a difficult time controlling his

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