The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Nighttime Visual Analysis

The inner workings of a particular person’s mind are exclusive to another person’s, as we are all individuals with distinct thoughts and responses. This affects a person’s private world and therefore their experiences in the public world. In the novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, Mark Haddon highlights the ideals and disparities of the private and public worlds. He does this through the use of a naïve narrator (Christopher Boone) who has Asperger’s; meaning his private world and perception of the public world is idiosyncratic. Haddon uses various literary and visual techniques in the narrative voice of the novel to accentuate the impact of Christopher’s private world on his experiences in the public world.

Certain features in an …show more content…
An example of this can be found in the novel, when Christopher goes to London to find his mother, who he previously thought to be dead, and then has to see his dad (who lied to him) again. Despite his cognitive difference, Christopher’s reaction of blocking out his father is ordinary and expected; however, his private reaction and recounting of events were completely his own. Christopher’s repetition and uses the connectives “and” and “but” at the beginning of sentences accumulates a list of occurrences in his surrounding environment. This demonstrates how Christopher’s anomaly always instigates him to seek structure, order, logic and simplicity, like a list. An example of this repetition can be seen in this quote when Christopher’s father talks to him “And he said… And then he… And father said… And there were tears”. A simile is later used to illustrate the over-observance of Christopher’s private world and how he draws parallels to understand complex ideas. This is displayed