Christopher John Francis Boone is a fifteen-year-old autistic British boy who functions as the narrator of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Through Christopher, the reader is able to experience firsthand what it is like to be autistic. At times, Christopher’s voice sounds as though it should be coming from a much younger child, perhaps a seven- or eight-year-old boy.His vocabulary and understanding of the world around him is very simple: he thinks in terms of black and white; shades of gray confuse him. He does not understand metaphors or facial expressions, and he gets frustrated when things around him change—even relatively minor things, such as furniture being rearranged. Christopher also has a variety of habits and preferences, typical of a child with autism: he loves prime numbers and knows all of them up to 7,057 (he even numbers the chapters of his book with prime numbers); his food cannot touch another type of food before he eats it; he hates the color yellow and the color brown; he hates France and he hates being touched. It seems that his only friend is his rat, Toby. He even admits that the other kids at his school are "stupid," which evinces another typical characteristic of a child who is autistic—the lack of empathy.

However, Christopher’s great talent lies in the area of concrete thinking, especially math. Christopher is able to explain complex mathematical and statistical problems with clear, straight-forward language (for example, he takes the reader through the Monty Hall problem, which involves three doors, two with goats behind them and one with a car, and what the chance is of getting the car). It is this concrete, logical thinking that helps Christopher get an A on his math exams and propels his desire to be a scientist.

The premise for Christopher telling this story is that he is writing a book about who killed Wellington, his neighbor’s dog.This gives Christopher an audience and allows the reader to feel more connected to the narrator. For example, when Christopher is in the train station in London, surrounded by strangers and unfamiliar objects, it makes perfect sense to the reader—granted access to Christopher’s thoughts and feelings—that he would clutch his knees, rock back and forth, and moan loudly.

Ed and Judy Boone are Christopher’s parents. At the beginning of the novel, Christopher lives alone with his father, Ed, because Christopher believes that his mother was killed by a heart attack two years ago.Ed does his best to take care of Christopher, although at times it seems as if having an autistic child takes its toll on Ed.Ed commands Christopher to drop the investigation into Wellington’s death and later, when he finds Christopher’s book of notes, hits Christopher for defying him.

Ed ostensibly is the antagonist of the novel, as Christopher eventually finds out that his mother is alive and his father had lied to him, hiding her letters.Christopher then sets off to London to find his mother, who appears only in the last third of the book.Christopher’s father comes looking for him, intent on setting his relationship with Christopher right.

Judy, Christopher’s mother, left his father after having an affair with a neighbor, Mr. Roger Shears (the former husband of Mrs. Eileen Shears, the woman who owned Wellington).When Judy finds Christopher on her doorstep, she is overcome with emotion and insistent that he stays with her as long as he needs to—though Roger protests having Christopher in their flat.These actions seem to make Judy out to be the “good parent”; however, Ed is the parent who stayed with Christopher and would have...