Powerful, gripping, widely-loved novels are characterized by many different writing techniques. Of these techniques, one of the most effective is an author’s ability to create a character that any reader can identify with. Even if the character thinks and acts differently than the reader would, a reader’s ability to recognize human reactions and instincts in the character will help to cement the connection. In the case of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon, the author is faced with the difficult task of making an identifiable character out of a boy who is autistic and therefore very set apart in his way of thinking. As Haddon recounts a story through Christopher Boone’s eyes, he finds ways to emphasize the familiar human traits present in the teenager’s autistic mind through the element of trust.
Christopher’s life revolves around patterns and similarities. He trusts that life will stay the same. He trusts concepts such as math and time because they can never change. For example, when Christopher is arrested at the beginning of the novel for hitting a policeman, he is taken to jail and asked to remove is personal belongings. Christopher tells his readers, however, that when they try to take his watch, he tells them, “that I needed to keep my watch on because I needed to know exactly what time it was. And when they tried to take it off me, I screamed” (13). In strange and unfamiliar surroundings, time is the only constant the boy can trust.
Christopher likes knowing what is going to happen and how he should react. For example, he later talks about how if he sees a classmate on the ground, he checks them for signs of an epileptic attack. Christopher can place a certain level of trust in being able to identify what is wrong with a classmate and what is the appropriate reaction. Patterns, whether in math or reality, of action and reaction give Christopher a feeling of safety. He explains to the reader on page 33 that he does not believe in Heaven or God because nobody knows where Heaven or God is. He cannot see or prove either concept for himself, and therefore, he has no reason to place his trust in them.
Christopher’s father is a key character in showing just how momentous his son’s trust or lack-there-of can be. The boy has learned to trust his father’s habits. He knows his father is quick to anger, and he recognizes when to be quiet because he has made his father angry: action and reaction. In Christopher’s life, where consistency—a pattern what is going to happen every day that he can count on—is absolutely key, his father provides the most stability. For this reason, when Christopher discovers that his father has lied to him about his mother’s death, a part of his world shatters. Suddenly surrounded by the unfamiliar, the idea that his mother is alive and that he cannot trust his father, Christopher shuts down. Right after his father confesses to killing Wellington, Christopher thinks to himself, “Father had murdered Wellington. That meant he could murder me, because I couldn’t trust him, even though he had said “Trust me,” because he had told a lie about a big thing” (122). Christopher has no logical reason to think he is in any danger from his father, but his life is broken down into two categories: what he can trust and what he cannot trust. There is no middle ground. Haddon elegantly crafted situations and thought patterns up to this point to show the reader how fundamental trust is in Christopher’s life. By the time the reader reaches the scene where Christopher loses all confidence in his father, the reader has learned to understand the boy’s reaction and sudden distance from the parent.
Haddon very eloquently presents the inner workings of Christopher’s mind to the reader so that he becomes an identifiable character. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is a gripping novel because as the reader gets deeper into the novel, he or she becomes able to understand Christopher’s thinking and motive-for-action as well as feel sympathetic towards the father and his struggle to regain Christopher’s precious trust. Such fundamental human concepts help to make the book one that will linger in any book-lover’s heart. (723)
Friday, August 31, 2007
Monday, August 27, 2007
Writing and Balance
Dear Mr. Coon,
I have spent the better part of my seventeen years falling in love with reading and writing. I adore being able to submerge myself in a novel; I become oblivious to the world around me. I used to spend entire baseball games with my dad eating peanuts and reading. Not even the fans, screaming as they jumped to their feet around me, could distract me from my book. During episodes of boredom where a book was not permitted—such as church, thanksgiving, or math class—I brought stories to life inside my own mind. By fifth grade, writing had become my favorite hobby and was largely responsible for the missing homeworks that showed up on my report cards. While the other kids aspired to be astronauts or doctors or movie stars, I set my heart on becoming an author.
When I entered the high school at PCDS, I finally had to learn about this funny thing called “balance.” I couldn’t just read and write; I needed to study too. Getting lost in a book has since become a luxury I save for holidays and summer. After a few grueling months of academics, I love rewarding myself with page-turning thrillers or mysteries, such as Maximum Ride by James Patterson or The Lake of Dead Languages by Carol Goodman. Writing, however, is my true passion. Six years ago, I dreamt of a world dominated by Street-Kids who had been orphaned during WWIII and were now banding together to survive. For six years, the idea has grown inside my imagination and my computer’s hard drive. While I sometimes digress to write short stories or school papers, my book dominates most of my writing time. Besides my half-finished novel, I also take pride in the papers I wrote last year during Ms. Garagiola’s composition class. Her class was my only way to continue writing during Junior Year, and I loved the way she challenged my style and forced me to rethink every word I put on the page. Through that class, I was able to identify my strengths and weaknesses as a writer. I believe my strength lies in my ability to project any image or emotion directly onto my readers; I love to describe. My weakness lies in my love of words; I occasionally use them too much. I am still growing as a young author. I want to succeed, and the only way to do that is to keep writing.
As Sean Connery so brilliantly stated in Finding Forrester, “Writers write.” (421)
I have spent the better part of my seventeen years falling in love with reading and writing. I adore being able to submerge myself in a novel; I become oblivious to the world around me. I used to spend entire baseball games with my dad eating peanuts and reading. Not even the fans, screaming as they jumped to their feet around me, could distract me from my book. During episodes of boredom where a book was not permitted—such as church, thanksgiving, or math class—I brought stories to life inside my own mind. By fifth grade, writing had become my favorite hobby and was largely responsible for the missing homeworks that showed up on my report cards. While the other kids aspired to be astronauts or doctors or movie stars, I set my heart on becoming an author.
When I entered the high school at PCDS, I finally had to learn about this funny thing called “balance.” I couldn’t just read and write; I needed to study too. Getting lost in a book has since become a luxury I save for holidays and summer. After a few grueling months of academics, I love rewarding myself with page-turning thrillers or mysteries, such as Maximum Ride by James Patterson or The Lake of Dead Languages by Carol Goodman. Writing, however, is my true passion. Six years ago, I dreamt of a world dominated by Street-Kids who had been orphaned during WWIII and were now banding together to survive. For six years, the idea has grown inside my imagination and my computer’s hard drive. While I sometimes digress to write short stories or school papers, my book dominates most of my writing time. Besides my half-finished novel, I also take pride in the papers I wrote last year during Ms. Garagiola’s composition class. Her class was my only way to continue writing during Junior Year, and I loved the way she challenged my style and forced me to rethink every word I put on the page. Through that class, I was able to identify my strengths and weaknesses as a writer. I believe my strength lies in my ability to project any image or emotion directly onto my readers; I love to describe. My weakness lies in my love of words; I occasionally use them too much. I am still growing as a young author. I want to succeed, and the only way to do that is to keep writing.
As Sean Connery so brilliantly stated in Finding Forrester, “Writers write.” (421)
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