The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time Essay

In recent discussions of “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” a large controversial issue has been whether or not Christopher’s father’s decision to lie to his son was ethical or unethical. In the book, Christopher’s mother leaves her family to be with the man she’s been having an affair with. Upon hearing this unsettling information, Christopher’s father makes the quick instinctual decision to tell his son that his mother is in the hospital. With the combination of both his own emotions and Christopher’s well-being at heart, Christopher’s father decides to later falsely break the news to his son that his mother has died. Some believe what Christopher’s father did was an atrocity and completely immoral. Those who believe this

By talking with Mrs. Alexander, Christopher learns for the first time that his mother had an affair with their neighbor; Mr. Shears. When asked if Christopher felt sad about this he simply could not comprehend why he would be sad. In Christopher’s own words, “I would be feeling sad about something that isn’t real and doesn’t exist. And that would be stupid” (Haddon 75). From this we can’t really even guess how Christopher would have felt because he does not concern himself with “would-haves”. Based on an experiment in “Awareness of Single and Multiple Emotions in High-functioning Children with Autism”, data was found to support that “children with autism are less aware of their own emotions” (Rieffe 9). This means that though they knew what emotions were and how certain situations were supposed to make them feel, they themselves said they didn’t feel it. With this information we know that Christopher has never experienced someone leaving him and he most likely would not know how to react, nor react very well. Death on the other hand, is something more reasonable and with his mother dying he would know that he was supposed to be upset. It gave him reasoning and something he could accept unlike his mother just abruptly leaving his family. He wouldn’t understand those complex emotions and would constantly wonder why she left and where she