Curious Incident

By -

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time gave me an interesting take on what it is like to have autism as an adolescent. As I continued to read through the story, I felt like he was always overwhelmed with information. Words, sounds, sights, and actions stuck out to him significantly more than they would an average person. I could not imagine how stressful it would be to really never be able to give your brain a break. He was never able to shut everything out and just be himself.
I connected with this book on some level, because I have a member in my family who is special needs, so I have seen some of the challenges that come with that. She is an adolescent with Down Syndrome, so it is different than autism, but it is still difficult to deal with. There was one time specifically that I remember walking through the subways of New York City with her and the rest of my family when someone yelled at her for walking too slowly. She could not speak up for herself and say, “I have Down Syndrome,” because she does not completely understand it. This is similar to Christopher in many ways—one being with the first police officer. The officer did not know that he had autism, so he responded to him very harshly. There was also the time that he was going through the train station in London and people were getting frustrated with him. Haddon did a great job bringing attention to how society treats those with special needs as a whole.
The only problems I would really have with this text are how Haddon included all of the math problems, addresses, and signs that Christopher saw. For me, those were the parts that I got a little bit lost in. I was so busy keeping up with all of the different places that I missed the point sometimes. Maybe that was what Haddon meant to do, though. Maybe he meant to make it just as overwhelming for me as it was for Christopher.

Comments

  1. Kiara McVaySeptember 25, 2019 at 6:08 PM

    I too have a younger cousin who is special needs as well (I should’ve added that in my blog post) however she is in her adolescence stage as of right now (she’s 15) and she has trouble understanding certain things as well. One thing she does is always ask us our emotions as well she likes to say “You sleepy?” when we aren’t even tired which just reminded me of how Christopher struggled with understanding others emotions.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Tiara A WintonSeptember 25, 2019 at 7:20 PM

    Thank you for telling us about your family member. Outside of a required course for college i have no experience with children on the spectrum. I understand your frustration with reading the added material about math, and addresses and this part confused me as well. It wasn't until after rereading that I finally realized that Christopher focuses so heavily on logic because of his disconnect with "normal" social interaction.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Growing Pains - The Symbolism of the Tree in Speak

By -
I have felt the paralyzing pain of internal disease. The kind of trauma that causes your mouth to curl in and swallow you whole. I, like so many other women, are walking the halls in Melinda’s shoes in “Speak.” I thought Laurie Anderson did a phenomenal job of twisting all of the tribulations a high school girl goes through, into the tree that Melinda is. Whether we’re as strong as an oak or weak as a bush, we have all gone through the disease that strikes Melinda from the inside out. Melinda is like a half-dead tree. Some parts of her strive to blossom and create beauty. Other parts are broken and diseased. Like a dead tree, Melinda needs to save herself and “cut off the damage, [so it] is possible for the tree to grow again” (187). The symbolism of a tree is significant in “Speak.” Trees reflect her growing process. In the beginning, Melinda is a sick and lifeless tree. Her view is negative and dark. She’s so far past repair, bursts of sunlight do her no good. Sunlight would be pe...
Read more

How Starr Goes from Acting to Embracing in The Hate U Give

By -
In The Hate U Give, Starr Carter is caught between two worlds. She lives in a predominantly black neighborhood, but her father sends her and her brothers to a private school where she is surrounded by white people. She talks about acting differently depending on what group she is around, which can create some identity problems. She says on page 11, "Funny how it works with white kids though. It's dope to be black until it's hard to be black." When at Williamson, she sees white kids that think it's cool to engage in black culture, but she knows they don't understand what she goes through in her Garden Heights community. She witnessed her friend Natasha's death when she was 10 years old, and she sees gang activity in her community all the time. When she is among her black friends, like at the party, they tease her for hanging out with the white kids. This reminds me of a Drake song where he says, "I used to get teased for being black, and now I'm...
Read more

Postmodernism in Curious Incident

By -
Before I start writing, I first want to acknowledge that I just really loved this book! It seemed like a lot of the class had trouble enjoying or appreciating the novel because it's so different stylistically, which is understandable, but all of those unique elements helped make the novel more authentic. The main topic I want to focus on (also what I'm writing my paper on) is how a lot of postmodernist elements were used in the novel to make Christopher come to life. While obviously not every postmodern novel is about an autistic kid, I think Haddon really used a lot of these elements to his advantage and they ended up working out really well to characterize Christopher. One of the major postmodern elements which helps this book really craft an authentic portrayal of autism is the fact that it's metafictive. Basically, this means it's a "story within a story." Readers would be extremely limited just reading the parts of the novel which are meant to be C...
Read more