The Curious Incident

Throughout this course we have discussed what effects adolescents when they are going through this stage of life. In the novel, “the curious incident of the dog in the night-time,” we are introduced to the Christopher a young boy that has autism. He is extremely intelligent and excels in anything that makes logical sense. While he is a bright child, he struggles understanding facial expressions, and social cues because of his condition. He also has things he gets focused on quite often, doesn’t like to be touched, stays away from strangers, and likes to stick to a schedule. In this novel however we see parents that don’t seem to be able to handle a child that has autism such as Christopher. This baffles the audience because every adolescent needs a parent to be their for them, and Christopher needs it just the same if not more because of his condition.

            As we get towards the middle of the book, we start to see that Christopher’s father isn’t what he has put on to be around everyone else. Once he figures out that his son has been talking to Ms. Shea about the past, he suddenly loses it on Christopher. Here it states, “Holy fucking Jesus, Christopher. How stupid are you?” (81) This sentence that comes out of his fathers’ mouth has so much power because he calls him stupid, and because he is taking his own mistakes out on his son. This sentence holds so much weight is because his own father knows his son has a condition but calls him stupid anyways. This could negatively effect Christopher because maybe he doesn’t understand that his dad is just saying this out of anger but instead holds on to that one little word for the rest of this life. Always questioning that maybe he isn’t smart because his own dad told him that so long ago. Another example of how his father treats him poorly is when he gets so angry, he grabs Christopher super hard on his arm, which then causes Christopher to lash out. Here it states, “But father interrupted me and grabbed hold of my arm really hard. Father had never grabbed hold of me like them before” (82). Here we can see that his father has now taken his angry and put it on to his son. This confuses Christopher and even brings back negative memories of his mother hitting him when she was in the picture. This is never goof for any child but again for Christopher he doesn’t completely understand what is going on and might hold on to like he did when his mother hit him as well.

            Another example of his parents not being able to handle a child with autism is when his mother just doesn’t support him in his dreams. Here it says, “I don’t know whether that’s going to be possible” (202). Here we see his mother basically tell her son he can’t pass the math A exam, even though Christopher is super excited about it because he knows he can pass it. It shows us that his mother doesn’t really know Christopher at all and assumes that because he has Autism, he wouldn’t be able to do it, which just isn’t true. She needs to be there to support her child in anything he does because it will make, he always feels like he has someone in his corner.

            Overall, we can see that both of Christopher’s parents don’t seem to be able to handle a child that has Autism because he needs them to be there for him no matter what. Also, they need to both support him because without that parent support it will make it even harder for him over time.