How does Christopher experience and deal with his emotions in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time?

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 people's emotions is limited. His therapist, Siobhan, tries to help him identify emotion in himself and others using simple line drawings of faces. He is able to relate to a smiling face, which he identifies as

"happy," like when I'm reading about the Apollo space missions, or when I am still awake at 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. in the morning and I can walk up and down the street and pretend I am the only person in the whole world

He identifies the frowning face as

"sad," which is what I felt when I found the dead dog

However, he is unable to relate to or identify more complicated expressions, such as surprise, confusion, or frustration. Besides happy and sad, the only emotion that Christopher ever names as a narrator is fear.

Most of the time, Christopher is perceived as being alienated from his emotions, as seen in his exchange with Mrs. Shears when she brings up her husband's affair with Christopher's mother.

And I replied, "But I don't feel sad about it. Because Mother is dead. And because Mr. Shears isn't around anymore. So I would be feeling sad about something that isn't real and doesn't exist. And that would be stupid."

Partly because Christopher is only able to emotionally process things that are happening to him in the moment, others see him as detached or unemotional. In actuality, he feels things deeply but is only able to react to his immediate reality and the things that he sees as logically affecting him.

His intense experience of emotion can be seen when he discovers his mother's letters in his father's closet. The revelation that his father lied to him causes him to feel dizzy and sick, and he eventually throws up and passes out. Although Christopher is unable to name the emotions he feels when under such distress, he can identify the physiological responses his body undergoes, often describing it as feeling "sick" or "giddy." In this way, Christopher processes intense emotion physically rather than through words.

How and why does Christopher's character evolve in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time?

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, such as the fact that he has a pet rat, loves math, and has difficulty with social interactions. Readers learn that Christopher has some sort of disability, although it is never named in the novel specifically. Christopher changes throughout the novel due to many reasons.

At the beginning of the story, Christopher discovers his neighbor's dead dog. He wonders who killed this dog using a pitchfork and decides to write a book so that he can figure out the murderer. While he is writing his book, he discovers that the dog's murderer is in fact his own father. He also discovers his father's motive for killing the dog. His mother was having an affair with the neighbor before she supposedly died of a heart attack. Christopher also discovers that his father lied about his mother's death and that she has been living in a different town and trying to contact him for the last two years. Christopher takes it upon himself to travel to his mother's house so that he can live with her rather than his father.

All of these things cause Christopher to change into a young man who is now more confident with his social interactions. He is able to interact with strangers at the end of the novel, which is something that was extremely difficult for him to do at the beginning of the story. He is also more self-sufficient and is able to navigate his way through his problems to find helpful solutions to his issues. Christopher also learns how to be more accepting and flexible. At the start of the novel, he is very rigid in the ways he sees the world and the people in his life. By the end of the novel, he has accepted that his parents are not the people he initially thought them to be and that this is something that is just a part of life.

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 that pursuit of that desire is determined and brave. What makes people cry in the theatre is bravery, its people being brave.

Simon Stephens, the playwright of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, writes here about how he strives to create empathetic characters in his plays: people who we can recognize and relate to and who move us with their choices in the face of diversity.

Christopher has Asperger’s syndrome. At the beginning of his story, he discovers that his neighbor’s dog has been killed. This curious incident shakes him up. Christopher is exactingly literal in how he deals with things. He does not tell lies, as he tells us. This is not because “I am a good person” but because he simply cannot tell lies⁠—the concept is alien to him. He is mystified by the idea of metaphors, because, as he says,

I think it should be called a lie because a pig is not like a day and people do not have skeletons in their cupboards. And when I try to make a picture of the thing in my head it just confuses me because imagining an apple in someone’s eye doesn’t have anything to do with liking someone a lot and it makes you forget what the person was talking about.

As Christopher investigates the death of his neighbor’s dog, he inadvertently stumbles into a web of secrets being kept by his parents, Ed and Judy, that ironically and inexorably lead to his discovery of who killed the neighbor dog, Wellington.

The dark family secret is that Judy left the family⁠—and Christopher⁠—a few years before because her marriage to Ed was disintegrating and because she was not able cope with Christopher’s autism effectively. To make matters worse, Ed has lied to Christopher and told him that his mother is dead. And to make things even worse, it was Ed himself who got out-of-control angry one night and killed the neighbor's dog. When Christopher finds out the truth about all of this, he short-circuits and decides to leave his father and go to see his mother in London.

Now Christopher is really shaking up his world. He has previously lived a contained existence in his home village. He has invented personal rules that allow him to deal with the world, and he thrives on routine⁠—he always the same food for meals, he has colors he likes and colors he avoids, and he has special reactions that protect him when he feels threatened. But en route to London, on his own, Christopher has to summon up a different way of using his routines and skills to deal with scary, alien environments on the road.

Somebody bumps into Christopher. He barks at them like a dog.

SIOBHAN: Underpass means tunnel, Christopher. In your head imagine a big red line across the floor. It starts at your feet and goes through the tunnel. And walk along the line. And count the rhythm in your head because that helps, doesn’t it? Like when you’re doing music or when you’re doing drumming. Left right, left right, left right, left right.

CHRISTOPHER: Left right, left right, left right, left right, left right, left right.

CHRISTOPHER: Is this the train to London?

As he travels, various family and friends of Christopher⁠—his father Ed and his school counselor Siobhan⁠—come to him in his head and talk to him, helping him through his journey. He finally arrives at his mother’s flat and tells her the whole story. Judy has had no idea about her husband’s lie, and when she finds out, she asks her son if she can hold his hand, just for once. But this is something he cannot change, even in these circumstances: Christopher will not allow his mother to hold his hand. He doesn't like being touched by other people. He does agree, though, when she tells him he has been very brave.

Christopher is very angry at his father and frightened by him. When Ed comes to London to try and bring his son home, Christopher pulls out his Swiss Army knife to keep his father away and will not allow his father to come near him. Later, after he and Judy return to their hometown to live together, and so that Christopher can continue his schooling and take his A Levels in math, Ed reaches to try and get Christopher to trust him again. He has poor results, until

He comes back with a big cardboard box. It is importantly cardboard and different to the other boxes. There’s a blanket in it. He puts his hands in the box. He takes out a little sandy colored Golden Retriever.

ED: He’s two months old. Christopher I would never do anything to hurt you.

The dog sits on Christopher’s lap.

JUDY: You won’t be able to take him away with you I’m afraid. The flat’s too small. But your Father’s going to look after him here. And you can come and take him out for walks whenever you want.

CHRISTOPHER: Does he have a name?

ED: No. You can decide what to name him.

CHRISTOPHER: Sandy. He’s called Sandy.

This is an important healing moment for this broken family. Christopher accepts the dog and the arrangement to come visit the dog at his father’s home. This dog is a replacement for the dead dog, Wellington, who began this tale, and it was Christopher’s father, Ed, who killed Wellington in the first place. Christopher’s distrust of his father will not be healed overnight, but this is a first small step. Soon enough, Christopher tells Siobhan that he and his father are planting vegetable gardens together.

And after he gets an A* on his A Level exams, Christopher confides in Siobhan that maybe someday he can “live in a flat with a garden and a proper toilet,” go to a university in another town, and can become a scientist. And this is because

CHRISTOPHER: I can because I went to London on my own. I solved the mystery of who killed Wellington. I found my mother. I was brave . . . Does that mean I can do anything?

Christopher’s brave adventures in the big outside world have helped him to imagine a life beyond anything he could have imagined. He has realized through his adventures that his unique abilities can propel him toward the life he has always desired. This has been the playwright's intention:

That’s when we recognise the moment in our lives, where you aren’t necessarily trying to uncover the mystery of who killed a dog, but other things we’re striving for. We recognise ourselves in Christopher.

In The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Christopher's actions dramatically change the unhealthy dynamics of his family first when he forces his father to confess that his mother is not dead and then when he runs away from home to find her.

At the beginning of the narrative, Christopher's father has been keeping several important secrets from his son. In the course of his investigations into Wellington's death, Christopher discovers letters from his mother, even though his father had told him that she was dead. It is Christopher's dramatic discovery of these letters that begins the unravelling not only of the central mystery of the plot, but of the secrecy that has blighted the Boone family.

Christopher's decision to run away from his father's house and find his mother is even more dramatic. Though it does not reunite the family, since his parents remain separated, Christopher's decisive act does bring him back into contact with his mother, as well as exposing the truth. While his relations with his father are still strained at the end of the book, there is potential for them to improve, and they are no longer based on deception.