The Curious Incident a novel which explores important ideas and issues regarding the differences between those with Asperger’s syndrome and those without. Haddon highlights the differences through the eyes of a 15-year-old boy with Asperger’s syndrome who experiences important issues in the novel such as growing up, family break-up and the impact of being different This extract takes place after Chris decides to run away from home to catch a train to London to live with his mother. For example, it reveals that when he is frightened Chris has many strategies to control his anxiety to help him cope with his social inadequacy and inexperience with the outside world.
Haddon’s main character is a 15-year-old boy named Chris B who has Asperger’s Syndrome, which acts as a catalyst in highlighting the differences between his focus and intellectual advantages and societal misunderstandings, as he traverses further into the real world to
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Haddon’s choice of protagonist, a 15-year-old boy with Asperger’s syndrome, is important as Chris doesn’t lie and when his father lies about his mother, he runs away. Haddon uses the narrative voice of Chris to allow the responder to understand the way Chris’s mind works and how he reacts to certain things in relation to what is happening in the world around him. Chris’s anxiety after having his trust with Father being broken is expressed using diagrams, longwinded sentences and non-emotive language, communicating Chris’s struggle to focus on what he’s doing, and conveying his thought process in logical problem solving, as he resolves the issue through likening the situation to a maths exam, allowing him to make the rational decision to live with his mother. These longwinded sentences convey Chris’s stressed thought process as they also contrast with his typical short and sharp sentences, reflecting his usual logical and straight-forward perspective of his experiences and