The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

In Chapter 167, Christopher learns that it was his father who killed Wellington. His father comes clean, telling Christopher that he will always be truthful with him from now on. He tells his son...

One must make allowances for Christopher's autism in evaluating the reliability of his narration. As a young man with Asperger's syndrome he sees the world differently to most people. Christopher's...

Christopher Boone ends the story by enumerating his ambitions for the future and explaining that he knows he can achieve them because of all that he has accomplished during the course of the book....

A person's ethos is their characteristic spirit, as displayed in their beliefs and actions. Christopher Boone, the narrator of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, is a curious...

This is a question about your personal response, but it is worth considering what, and how much, the letters reveal, as well as their effect on Christopher. Apart from what the letters actually...

In Mark Haddon's novel "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime," the protagonist Christopher describes himself as a "mathematician with some behavioral difficulties." It is implied...

Christopher has some fairly normal reactions to his mother's death, and many more abnormal reactions - at least according to how most people would react. What is "normal" and "abnormal" is...

When Christopher's father first appears, he is collecting Christopher from the police station. Christopher says: Father was standing in the corridor. He held up his right hand and spread his...

Siobhan's character in Simon Stephens's play The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time does not differ greatly in terms of personality from the way she is presented in the novel. She is...

Not every part of the ending of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time leaves the reader completely satisfied. By the end of the story, we have learned about the true nature of the...

An author’s reasons for writing a book or for choosing a particular topic are seldom simple and transparent, even to the author himself or herself. Mark Haddon, however, was particularly...

In chapter 61 of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Christopher tells us that his mother was cremated. He mentions as an aside that he did not attend the funeral and gives no reason...

The theme of belonging stands at the heart of both The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon and The Black Balloon directed by Elissa Down, yet these two works explore that...

Christopher's mother left Christopher and her husband to live with her lover, the neighbor across the street. She, thus, has abandoned her son and her family. On a number of occasions she admits...

Christopher Boone is the main character in the novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon. Christopher is also the narrator of this story. Readers learn a lot about...

Christopher John Francis Boone, the protagonist of Mark Haddon's book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, is not always understood by society, and Christopher definitely neither...

To a great extent, Christopher's condition is responsible for three main conflicts in the book: character versus character, character versus self, and character versus nature. In the story,...

Mr. Boone makes many sacrifices for Christopher on an everyday basis. Looking after Christopher is a difficult task, and the difficulty is exacerbated by Christopher's lack of sympathy with him. In...

I think characters are sympathetic not because of what they say but because we recognize within them desire. What breaks our heart in drama is when a characters’ desire is clear and specific and...

I think it is a little bit of both. Clearly Mr. Boone has pent up anger over his wife leaving; he killed a dog because of it! He is angry about the affair, as anyone would be. Punishing his wife...

Christopher's explanation of how the mind works in chapter 163 of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is an exceptionally interesting piece of writing both on its own terms, as an...

Mark Haddon chose to make Christopher Boone the protagonist of The Curious Incident and to present the novel as if it were Christopher’s book, making Christopher the first-person narrator. Because...

"The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time" is primarily known as a story about an autistic boy and about the structure of his world and the way he makes sense of things around him. So...

Christopher's experience of emotion is far different from that of a neurotypical character. He is unable to name or distinguish nuanced emotions, and his ability to read or empathize with other...

It's never explicitly spelled out exactly what Christopher's condition is, but it shows all the hallmarks of autism. That being the case, Christopher, as with many people on the autistic scale,...

Although the word 'autism' never appears in the text, Christopher talks about his problems and the fact that he is seeing a therapist. His fixation on numbers and his inability to screen out...

Mark Haddon's 2003 novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is about a high-functioning autistic 15-year-old boy named Christopher whose search for the killer of his neighbor's dog...

In the play, as in the original book on which the play is based, the protagonist, Christopher, a teenage boy with autism, must overcome his fears of a world from which he is separated by his...

There is plenty of tension and suspense in Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. The discovery of the dead dog adds the suspense of a mystery, and Christopher is...

Simon Stephens, playwright of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, adapted the play from the book of the same name by Mark Haddon. In an interview, Stephens talks about the big...

Chapter 151 of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time deals not only with mysteries, but with how they can or might be logically explained. Some mysteries, such as the changes in the...

Christopher's father has modeled some positive characteristics that may have influenced Christopher. Most importantly, the dad never quit. He never gave up on Christopher and never left him alone,...

One of the central messages of Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is that parents are human beings who make wrong choices even if they love their children. We can see...

To clarify, diction is a reference to word choice, and syntax refers to the arrangement of words within a sentence. While there are many examples of dialogue from Christopher's parents, what is...

Siobhan is a minor character in the book, however, she is incredibly important to Christopher. She is his teacher at school, but she also helps to provide guidance for him that he clearly listens...

A claim, evidence, and response prompt (CER) asks the student to state a claim for what they are arguing, provide evidence that supports their claim, and explain their reasoning for this. These...

Judy is presented in the play as a well-intentioned woman attempting to do her best under difficult circumstances. She wants to be a good mother to Christopher but is not prepared to sacrifice her...

Christopher Boone's mother in Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is absent from her son's life at the outset of the novel. Because Christopher, the idiosyncratic...

The novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time is primarily about the importance of self-discovery. Christopher goes on a mission to find out who killed his neighbor's dog Wellington,...

In Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Christopher Boone faces the challenge of autism. This makes some aspects of his life quite difficult. He cannot stand to be...

He really follows a lot of routine as best he can, and he concentrates on very practical steps he can take to avoid having behavioral problems. He is aware of how he tends to react, so he tried to...

In the novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, we can learn much from Christopher about the truth. For a young man like Christopher with all the disabilities autism implies,...

In The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon, the technique of metafiction has a prominent place. Let’s begin by defining metafiction, and then we’ll look at how it works in...

The play version of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon presents the events of the story in a nonlinear fashion, not following a chronological timeline but rather...

Christopher is presented as a brilliantly gifted boy who experiences difficulty in understanding and relating to those around him. Audiences of the play and readers of the book on which it is based...

This is a fun and creative exercise (at least for us). You might not think to compare Mark Haddon's 2003 novel centered on a teen who has autism with a 1960s science-fiction novel about a bounty...