Curious Incident

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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time is a novel written by Mark Haddon. Just looking at the cover of the book and reading the title, I honestly didn’t even know what this book was going to be about. As I began reading, I got a bit confused as the chapters were going back and forth from Chris, the main character and narrator, telling a story about a dog to talking about his personal life explaining why he is different than most people basically explaining his autism. It was hard to keep on reading, so I found myself listening to the audiobook version which helped and kept me interested. I think that overall the author did a great job at not only portraying adolescents, but also portraying adolescents dealing with autism in this novel. While reading this article, I had to stop and research more about autism. I feel that knowing a bit more helped me enjoy the story better. The website I used that provided me with so much information was https://www.autismspeaks.org/what-are-symptoms-autism

One part of the book that was eye opening to me was the part when the police arrested Chris for assaulting him. “The policeman took hold of my arm and lifted me onto my feet. I didn’t like him touching me like this. And this is when I hit him.” I felt bad for him at this moment. With Chris having autism, he doesn’t like to be touched and when he is touched, he reacts in a way that he feels is necessary. Of course, the officer didn’t know this information, but once he was informed, Chris was let go with a warning. This situation just made me think about other people who have any disorders and go through similar situations because the other person didn’t know. This must happen on the daily. A small connection that I can make from this relates to the movie Radio. Radio is mentally disabled and goes through a similar situation like what Chris went through. Radio was delivering Christmas presents and when an officer stopped to talk to him to see where the presents came from, they accused him of stealing the presents and decided to arrest him because they simply couldn’t understand him and didn’t know that he had a disability. I understand that officers must take situations like this seriously but at the same time, I think that they should also be trained to identify disorders (if they can be identified, like in Radio’s case) and trained on how to best handle situations when they do come up.

“What Are the Symptoms of Autism?” Autism Speaks, www.autismspeaks.org/what-are-symptoms-autism.

Comments

  1. Ally DunlapSeptember 26, 2019 at 8:15 AM

    I was very shocked by the way some strangers in the novel treated Christopher. One of the first scenes that was surprising to me was also the scene with the police officer. Christopher did not want to hit the police officer, but he does not like to be touched. I love your connection to Radio! I do agree that police officers should be trained to identify disorders. Do you think it would help if police officers took a course about how to identify mental/health disorders?

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  2. Anna GilfillanSeptember 26, 2019 at 10:21 AM

    I struggled with keeping up with the book in the beginning as well. I thought the author did a good job of writing from the perspective of someone with autism. I found that to be very interesting. I also think that he did a good job of telling how people treat those with autism because majority of the time people either do not know they have it or they do not care. I loved the movie Radio and I loved how you connected the book to that movie! Have you ever personally seen someone mistreat a person with autism that you know of?

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