How would you feel about someone who went against your definition of love and truth?
In the book, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time By Mark Haddon, Christopher, the protagonist, is a 15-year-old boy with Autism who sets out to solve the murder of his neighbor's dog. Along the way, he not only solves the murder but uncovers the truth and lies behind his own family as well. Christopher's meaning of love and truth stays the same throughout the novel and doesn't make exceptions for the people he considered close to him.
Other Characters in the book like his mother and father also insinuate what they believe loving someone is. With every character’s own meaning of what love is, Christopher’s concept of love and truth seems
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Christopher goes into more detail when he explains,” Loving someone is helping them when they get into trouble, and looking after them, and telling them the truth, and
Father looks after me when I get into trouble like coming to the police station, and he looks after me by cooking meals for me, and he always tells me the truth which means that he loves me.”
However, it ends us being revealed that Christopher’s father had lied to him about many things including his mother’s death and the death of Wellington, betraying Christopher’s love and trust which he considers unforgivable. His definition doesn’t change over time which is proven when he refuses to talk to his father willingly. When Christopher learns that his father killed the dog Wellington and lied about his mother’s death, Christopher loses all trust in his father and becomes frightened whenever he is around. On page 167 Christopher states,” father had murdered Wellington. That means that he could murder me because I couldn’t trust him, even though he has said ‘trust me because he had told a lie about a big thing.” He also gets scared when his father is in the room with him because he’s afraid he might kill him by thinking. He shares, “And then Father came into
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But I was holding my Swiss Army Knife with the blade out iin case he grabbed me( pg
197).” And goes on to say,” And then he held up his right hand and spread his fingers out in a fan so that I could touch his fingers but I didn’t because I was frightened(pg 197).”
Other characters, like his mother and father, imply that to love someone means sacrificing for them and caring for them. His father insinuates that he cares for Christopher more than his mother when he shouts, “I cooked his meals, I cleaned his clothes. I looked after him every weekend. I looked after him when he was ill. I took him to the doctor. I worried myself sick every time he wandered off somewhere in the night. I went to school every time he got into a fight. And you? What? You wrote him some fucking letters” While the mother implies that she cared for Christopher by writing ”And I think that was when I realized that you and your father were probably better off if I wasn’t in the house. Then he would only have one person to look after instead of two” in one of her letters( pg, 109).
Christopher’s definition of love and truth is reasonable to a certain extent. While a person shouldn't lie to you, it isn’t necessary to fully rely on someone As for people lying,
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.
Raising a child like Christopher is very difficult. Christopher often disappears in the middle of the night to go out for walks and quickly becomes overwhelmed in new environments. For the better well-being of Christopher, Ed tends to be very overprotective of him. An example of this is shown when Christopher wants to do detective work to find out who killed Wellington. This idea suggests that Christopher has to talk to strangers which he is not comfortable with.
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
He is our protagonist and as we come to learn he isn't the nicest one out there, but this is mainly for his autism coming into play during most of his adventures. Near the end of the book christopher is forced to learn how to get over his fears to be able to go to his mothers but in his own unique way, “And it was like counting and saying, ‘Left, right, left, right, left, right. . .’ which Siobhan taught me to do to make myself calm. And I was saying in my head, ‘Train coming. Train stopped.
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).
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.
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.
Christopher grew up without knowing much about the world and life it self. He acts as what many would say a child. This is due to his Aspergers. In the beginning of the novel Christopher explains what he thinks of life.
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.