The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night Strengths And Weaknesses

Introduction: Although children with autism seem like they are outcasts they are just the same as any of us. In Mark Haddon’s book, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time readers watched Christopher grow through his difficulties. While reading this novel Christopher truly lets himself express his strengths and weaknesses. He expresses his needs that he has going through his day to day life.

Character Strengths and Weaknesses: Christopher has many strengths along with his weaknesses. Although he is different from other children around the age of 15 he could be more intelligent and outgoing. One of his many strengths is that he is very smart when it comes to mathematics and science. He uses the knowledge of math to cope with his

These weaknesses have a lot to do with autism; he has certain things that he doesn’t like and specific things that have to be in order. One thing that he is very adamant about is that he doesn’t like to be touched and if you didn’t know him you would obviously not know this about him nor would you realize that he has autism. Christopher shows an example of not liking to be tough when he was talking about the policeman and he says “I didn’t like him touching me like this. And this is when I hit him.” (Haddon 8). He has expressed that he likes policemen so in this incident this is not as if he is just hitting the policeman because he was being arrested he hit him because he was touching him. One of Christopher's major weaknesses is that he doesn’t like certain colors. He doesn’t like the color yellow nor the color brown. When he is going to school he sees four red cars in a row which is a good day, three red cars which is a quite good day, five red cars which is a super good day, or four yellow cars in a row which makes it a black day. He does this because he likes things in a nice order. People would look at that and think that he was crazy. Christopher knows that this isn’t a logical way to be thinking and he says Mr. Jeavons says “He was clearly a very logical person, so he was surprised that I should think like this because it wasn’t very logical.” (Haddon 24). Christopher is a very

Christopher will then “hold up his left hand and spread his fingers out in a fan and they make their fingers and thumbs touch each other” (Haddon 16). They used this as their ‘hug’ so that even when going through the struggle of not being able to hug their son they can at least touch him. Another thing that they face with Christopher is when he has his melt downs. They can often be very random or simply just because they are not doing something the way that Christopher wants them to be completed. Father is much better at calming and working with Christopher. In one of Mothers letters she said that father “is a much more patient person”(Haddon 106). Mother said that she “couldn’t take it any more. And your father is really patient but I’m not”(Haddon 106). Even though Mother loved Christopher and he was her son, it was still very hard for her.