The Curious Incident of the Dod in the Night-Time

Does Christopher always behave logically?

What does this tell us about his character?

In ‘The Curious Incident of The Dog in the Night’ Mark Haddon has written a thrilling tale about Christopher Boon a 15-year-old boy who suffers from autism. In this novel Christopher undertakes the task of finding out who killed his neighbour’s black poodle called Wellington. Throughout this novel Christopher had to overcome some of his own unique behaviours that where tied to his autism, such as when he finds Wellington laying on the ground bleeding and goes up and holds the dog, or when he goes against his own rules and does “chatting” with his neighbours to find out if they know anything about who killed Wellington. Christopher has been written with great detail and he has been filled with these amazing qualities and quirks. But with these qualities come some imperfections to Christopher, which causes him to behave illogically.

Behaving logically means behaving in a way that a group of people/peers (may that be your friends/family or greater community) believe is the norm/correct way of behaving. Christopher defies this within the very first page of Mark’s book. When Christopher see’s Wellington’s lifeless body laying on the ground with a bloody pitchfork poking out of him he chooses to go and hug the dog instead of going and waking his father or Mrs Shears, the owner of the dog. This is due to Christopher’s autism and not knowing what the logical way to behave is, he see’s a dog in pain so he believes comforting Wellington will be the right thing to do but he doesn’t understand that it will put him in a situation of looking like he himself took the dog’s life. Other examples of where Christopher’s illogical behaviour are shown is when he decides to take the investigation of Wellington’s death into his own hands instead of leaving it up to the police. He goes and does the police’s job by going and asking his neighbours questions about the death of the dog.

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