What are love and truth? Can one be without the other? For some, love cannot be without truth. In the book, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Christopher Boone finds his neighbor’s dog dead. He then decides to go on an investigative journey to find out who killed the dog. Christopher sees love and truth to be one and the same. His point of view on the two never changes throughout the book. However, despite having a similar view on love and truth as him, Christopher’s father’s viewpoint changes throughout the story depending on who he interacts with. Christopher believes that to trust someone is to love someone. At the beginning of the book, it is made clear that Christopher is uncomfortable with physical touch. Because of this, Christopher and his father spread their fingers out and touch their fingers together instead of hugging. He …show more content…
Near the beginning of the book, Christopher’s father tells him to, “Just try and keep your nose out of other people’s business” because he tried to figure out who killed the dog. Despite this, Christopher kept searching, which would have broken his father’s trust and betrayed his love. Christopher’s father becomes angry that he is still searching for information and lashes out at him. Despite this, Christopher’s father shows that he still loves him by taking him to Twycross Zoo. Even with Christopher’s betrayal of his father’s trust, his father still loves him. This is not the case with his view of Christopher’s mother. Christopher’s mother cheated on his father, which betrayed their love and trust. When Christopher’s father showed up at his mother’s house, they just argued the entire time. Christopher’s mother betrayed his father’s trust, and he no longer loves her. Christopher betrayed his father’s trust, but his father still loved him. However, Christopher’s father stopped loving his mother when she betrayed his
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
which unfortunately led him to reject and avoid any type of close relationships that he had made on his journey as Christopher did not want them to interfere with his decision to travel to Alaska on his own terms, as well as becoming completely concerned for his safety and welfare, which he almost failed to do so when he met an older man named Ron who deeply cared and loved Chrisopher as he wanted to adopt him into his family. Along the way Christopher starts to show his hatred towards authority as he goes on and shows multiple ways on how he avoided having to follow the law by breaking a lot of safety awareness laws which makes him an idiot as he risked his entire life and made it very difficult for others to come to his aid incase of an
That started the summer he graduated from high school. His parents explained, “He could be generous and caring to a fault, but he had a darker side as well, characterized by monomania, impatience, and unwavering self-absorption, qualities that seemed to intensify through his college years (120).” The event that created Christopher to become more isolated was the father keeping a secret of having another family. After finding out about his father secret family Christopher started containing a dark side that wanted no part of human contact. He wanted ultimate freedom from individuals and society that led him not wanting to have any long-term intimacy relationships with the individuals he met throughout his journey.
After realizing what a negative impact he had on these people’s lives, he started being friendly with them and decided to find out where Christopher was, so he could level everything out with him. Overall, finding out the truth may come with many obstacles, but it is important to overcome them.
An example of this is in chapter 127. Christopher’s father becomes furious with Christopher after learning that he was writing a book about Wellington’s death and ended up speaking with Mrs. Alexander and learning of his mother's affair. This escalates to Christopher and his father
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
When he leaves for Alaska, the man that has been helping him, Franz, asks to adopt him as a grandson. Christopher tells him that he needs to travel to Alaska alone first and when he gets back they can talk about it. This proves that Christopher needed to do things on his own to truly understand the world. Finally, he realized that nature can be harsh and uncaring as well. When he started running out of supplies to survive he came to that conclusion because he was soon not going to have anything.
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.
“Christopher, I would never, ever do anything to hurt you.” Christopher’s father makes a promise to Christopher. He promises he will do anything and everything it takes to help him regain Christopher’s trust again. Christopher
When Christopher finds out that his father killed Wellington and hid the truth about his mom, Christopher's conscience tells him that he must leave to live with his mother. "I had to get out of the house. Father had murdered Wellington. That meant he could murder me, because I couldn't trust him, even though he said, "Trust me," because he had told a lie about a big thing" (122 Haddon). This quote is significant because it shows that Christopher's journey begins as a result of a traumatic experience.
He causes Christopher to act secretively, as he does not explain what was wrong in the situation. This happened when Christopher was inquiring about Wellington- his father responds by telling him to ‘Not go around sticking your ******* nose in other people’s business’ (82), but not fully elaborating on how so. This leaves Christopher to try testing a gray area, especially since he is autistic and will take everything in a literal manner.
The characterization of Christopher is seen when he states: “Then I stopped reading the letter because I felt sick. Mother had not had a heart attack… And father had lied about this” (Haddon 112). In this scene, Christopher’s trust in his father is broken as he finds out his father lied about his mother's death, which causes Christopher to feel a wide range of emotions including shock, betrayal, and upsetness. These emotions characterize Christopher because they show how his character has changed over the course of the story from being seen as out of touch with his emotions and insensitive to events that would cause emotional trauma to others.
He made a shocking discovery, his mother was not dead. She left him and his father and was living with her significant other in London. Christopher got very emotional and was angry with his father because he lied to him. After a tedious trip, he reunited with his mother and was ecstatic to see her. He wanted to form a relationship with his mother and trusted her to keep him safe.
Christopher’s view on both are very limited compared to others. He explains that life to him is very hard to understand no matter how long he thinks of it. When Christopher goes on the investigation of who killed Wellington his view on life and the world will change
This proves how much father loves Christopher because he will sacrifice hugging his son for the most part and that should hurt a lot not being able to hug his son. There are lots of sacrifices Christopher’s father makes for his son, like not being able to hug him, or having to deal with him being “different” but he sacrifices it all because he loves Christopher. Furthermore, Christopher’s father is not perfect. He makes mistakes, some really big ones. Father hid Christopher’s mother from him for a really long time, but he did it to protect Christopher because he loves him and won’t let anything bad happen to Christopher.