The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night Coming Of Age

Olivia Fernandez

Barbour

Honors English 1

18 December 2022

Coming of Age When Christopher finds out that his mother is alive and living in London, his whole world turns upside down. His father had told Christopher that his mother had died from a heart attack and that he couldn’t visit her in the hospital. Although this surprised him, he believed his father and never questioned whether this was the truth or not, until he explored a little too far and found unopened letters addressed to his name. This specific scene, from the book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon, develops the thematic idea of coming of age in Christopher. The author uses literary devices, such as point of view, characterization, and irony, to

When his father gets home and walks into Christopher's room after Christopher has read the letters, he sees the state that his son is in and starts to freak out. His father started to caress Christopher “but it didn't hurt when he touched him, like it normally does” (Haddon 114). This reveals that when Christopher is put in a situation like this, he becomes numb to reality and what would normally affect him does not. While his father is trying to justify his actions, Christopher does not respond and remains silent as he is talking. Learning all this new information about his mother takes longer for Christopher to process and has more of a substantial effect on him since he has autism. Furthermore, when Christopher learns that the murderer of the neighbor’s dog, Wellington, is his father, he starts to become frightened of his father as he “screamed and pushed him backward that he fell off the bed and onto the floor” (Haddon 122). There is a shift in Christopher’s emotional state from being in shock to any trust he had left in his father being broken even more. He starts to become aggressive and this emphasizes a difference in how Christopher views his father which helps shapes his character while reading through the

As Christopher continues to receive new information throughout the story, he normally acts like he does not care and just accepts it without genuinely feeling emotion. When Mrs. Alexander tells him that his mother cheated on his father with Mr. Shears, he does not “feel sad about it. Because his mother is dead. And because Mr. Shears isn't around anymore. So he would be feeling sad about something that is real and doesn't exist and that would be stupid” (Haddon 75). On the other hand, this is ironic because later on in the novel when Christopher finds his mother’s letters and discovers that his father killed the neighbor's dog, Christopher’s perspective changes significantly. Christopher thought his father would never lie to him so finding out that he was dishonest, completely breaks the trust he had in his father. He becomes fearful and feels like he has “to get out of the house. Father had murdered Wellington. that meant he could murder him, because he couldn't trust him, even though he had said ‘trust me’, because he had told a lie about a big thing” (Haddon 122). The irony contributes to the theme because when Christopher’s trust was broken by his father it caused him to react in a way he usually does