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

666 Words3 Pages

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 …show more content…

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

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Christopher’s odd paralysis attack after reading hidden letters from his mother emphasize some processes of his already mentioned, and seem to negate others. From the prior readings, it was deduced as a class consensus that Christopher has difficulty showing emotion, yet he becomes really shaken up after learning his mother is alive, implying his father had lied to him twice (I wrote implying because during Christopher’s panic attack he says “And I could tell that he was in the room, but his voice sounded tiny and far away…” on page 113, so he may not even had heard his father’s first apologies.) If this was a case of being emotionally disturbed, shocked, or even angry at his father, it would make this situation even more meaningful when analyzing

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How Is Christopher's Father Justified To Lie

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Christopher was already aware that his mother had left and had been struggling with the emotional consequences of her absence. Lying to him only served to further confuse and distress him, as he struggled to reconcile the lie with his own experiences. Moreover, Christopher's father's lie was motivated by his own self-interest. He lied to protect himself from Christopher's rejection and to avoid having to face the difficult emotions associated with his wife's abandonment.

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And yet this concealment of emotion dissuades those who would offer friendship in spite of his lineage, leaving him alone. Despite his attempts to ignore his solitude, to not let this loneliness affect him, he is human after all, and Christopher does not know how to simply turn off sentiment. This incapability frightens him, it is a weakness and in his world of darkness, a weakness can simply not be afforded. So he hides it best he can, holding it tight between his fingers and never letting go. It grows within him as he matures, and the stinging seed of loneliness grows into a bitter flower of resentfulness as those around him leave him seperate from their games and

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On pages 106-107 (paperback) when Christopher is reading the letter his mom wrote to him she says “I’m not a very good mother, Christopher. Maybe if things were different, maybe if you'd been different, I might have been better at it. But that’s just the way things turned out. I'm not like your father.”

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Self) to develop the coming-of-age theme to explain how Christopher becomes more independent as the novel continues. For example, when he plans on living with his mother when he thinks his father will kill him. “I looked up and saw him staring through the bars at me. I had to get out of the house. Father had murdered Wellington.

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This is seen when the Mother sends letters to Christopher and says “ “I wonder if you can understand any of this. I know it will be very difficult for you. But I hope you can understand a little. Christopher, I never meant to hurt you. I thought that what I was doing was the best for all of us.

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Christopher explains that he has difficulty figuring out people’s emotions from their facial expressions. He can easily recognize sad and happy faces, but when his therapist, Siobhan, draws some pictures of other emotions, he finds the faces are confusing and is “unable to say what these meant” (3). So he has to memorize the exact meaning of each face and quickly determine what face others are making when they talk to him. When his father lies to him about his mother’s death, he tries to figure out what he means how and his father feels: “I can't tell what [people] are thinking. It is like being in a room with a one-way mirror in a spy film''(22).

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Even though Christopher struggles to understand people's emotions by their facial expressions and when expressing his emotions, he is usually straightforward. It shows that even though he

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How Does Haddon Use Descriptive Language

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Haddon described that scene to give the reader a sense of curiosity and sadness, urging the reader to continue reading to find out who would do such a thing. Although Haddon uses descriptive words to help paint pictures, he doesn’t describe any emotions depicted in the book other than Christopher’s. The first-person setting leaves a lot of emotions to be inferred by the reader since Haddon only focuses on the main character. An example of this would be when Christopher leaves his detective book lying on the kitchen table and Father finds it. “It was 5:54 p.m. when Father came back into the living room.

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Haddon shows that the lies Christopher’s father tell to Christopher make Christopher learn to feel sympathy towards his mother. Christopher also learns to feel sympathy for his father through his father’s lies. These lies teach Christopher that he has no reason to feel badly for himself because of his disabilities or capabilities. Christopher shouldn’t be lied to, but the fact that the key people in his life do lie to him, helps him, given that Christopher shows signs of understanding feelings and sympathy after being lied to, which is huge considering he has Asperger’s. The lies Christopher are told help him learn to feel sympathy for his mom.

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