Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident

Mark Haddon alters the fabrication of a reader’s perception, through the employed stylistic and language techniques demonstrated through the fictional protagonist, Christopher. Haddon’s selection of language features conveyed in ‘The Curious Incident’ enables readers to adopt a particular perspective centred on first person narration. Through this point of view, the novel gives an insight into the thought process of Christopher, readers can gather a heightened perspective of Christopher through Haddon’s characterisation and point of view of the autistic child, and those around him.

Explain how the author has used language features to allow the audience to experience Christopher’s perspective of the world, and how it sets up the reader’s perspective

Haddon emphasises Christopher’s limited perspective is restrained by his autism, and represented through Christopher’s description of his mother. ‘Mother was a small person who smelled nice. And she sometimes wore a fleece with a zip down the front which was pink and it had a tiny label which said Berghaus on the left bosom.’ Haddon represents an inability to assess what information is relevant, this again brings to question Christopher’s reliability, as readers are not provided with insight that enables the mother’s characterisation. The description lacks in tone, further contributing to the failure of establishing a perspective from both Christopher and the reader. This inability to describe characters in a relevant way can be justified, as Christopher cannot see what is relevant about them, Haddon deliberately demonstrates this with other irrelevant descriptions. From the descriptions Hadden portrays Christopher as unable to construct the minds and mental states of the people around him, or appeal to the mind of the potential the reader of his book. A more reliable perspective that a reader can develop is through Christopher’s interactions, and his records of conversation. ‘Jesus Christ, I’m seriously considering putting you in a home or Mother would say, ‘you are going to drive me into an early grave.’ through the quotation of the mother, a perspective

Disabled individuals are perceived as having less intelligence, potential, and capability. Christopher’s autism and learning difficulties make him a social outcast, and results in the breakup of his nuclear family, an important symbol of normalcy in Western society. Through the narrative readers can explore the lack of understanding on society’s behalf of Christopher and his behavioural problems. This is seen through his interactions with the police officers and the discrimination he faces by non-autistic people at the train station. It can be understood that his differences in behaviour lead him to face discrimination from society. ‘But this is stupid because everyone has learning difficulties because learning to speak French or understanding relativity is difficult and also everyone has special needs.’ This quote shows Christopher’s perspective of disability and how silly society’s ideas of normalcy are. It also interprets Haddon’s view of disability and difference, that Christopher isn’t defined by disability, he is just different. Haddon takes great measures to reinforce this message, and challenge society and cultural concepts. First person narration was a key language feature to sway his readers, this brings light to a new insight and perspective and mindset of autism by manipulating structure and form through the use of language and diagrams to reflect the mindset of the unconventional narrator. Thus, Haddon