The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2003) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

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Summary edit see section history

Characters edit see section history

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• Christopher John Francis Boone: The 15-year-old main character. He's good with numbers, though not so good with people. Many readers would diagnose Christopher with Aspergers Syndrome (someone who is very high functioning on the Autism Spectrum), but Mark Haddon has mentioned in interviews that he did not intentionally write Christopher with a label in mind.
• Wellington: Mrs. Shear's dog who was killed mysteriously with a garden fork. Introduced in the first chapter.
• Mrs. Shears: She lives on the other side of the street and used to be good friends with Christopher's dad. Since her dog Wellington is dead, she doesn't want to talk to Christopher (or his family) again.
• Judy Boone: Christopher's mother. Two years ago, she suddenly died in the hospital from a heart attack, after being brought there for something minor. Since then, Christopher lives with his dad.
• Ed Boone: Christopher's father. A 44 year old man who works for a two-man plumbing company. He has lots of patience and cares for his son despite the trials they face. His wife has died of a heart attack.
• Mrs. Alexander: Christopher's elderly neighbor who tries to befriend him.
• Siobhan: Siobhan is Christopher's teacher at his special needs school. She works with him one-on-one and gives him good advice on dealing with his behavioral problems, other people, and the world around him. She gives him the idea of writing a book.
• Toby: Toby is Christopher's pet rat. He is clean and does not have the bubonic plague. Christopher enjoys playing with him and feeding him rat pellets.
• Roger Shears: Mrs. Shears's (owner of Wellington) ex-husband.
• Rhodri: One of Christopher's father's friends, who works with him in the boiler business.
• Mrs. Gascoyne: Headmistress at Christopher's school.
• Mr. Jeavons: The psychologist at Christopher's school.
• Reverend Peters: Husband of Mrs Peters. Teaches religious studies at Christopher's school. Employed as invigilator when Christopher sits A levels.
• Sandy: The Golden Retriever pup that Mr. Boone gifted to Christopher when Christopher had stopped talking to him and was living with his mother
• Mrs. Peters: Teacher at Christopher's school.
• Mr. Shears aka Roger: Christopher's neighbor and his mother's lover

Quotes edit see section history

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• “And it's best if you know a good thing is going to happen, like an eclipse or getting a microscope for Christmas. And it's bad if you know a bad thing is going to happen, like having a filling or going to France. But I think it is worse if you don't know whether it is a good thing or a bad thing that is going to happen.”

  Christopher Boone

• “My name is Christopher John Francis Boone. I know all the countries of the world and their capital cities and every prime number up to 7,507.”

  Christopher Boone

• “I like dogs. You always know what a dog is thinking.”

  Christopher Boone

• “I also said that I cared about dogs because they were faithful and honest, and some dogs were cleverer and more interesting than some people. Steve, for example, who comes to the school on Thursdays, needs help to eat his food and could not even fetch a stick. Siobhan asked me not to say this to Steve's mother.”

  Christopher Boone

• “Prime Numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. I think Prime Numbers are like life.They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them.”

  Christopher Boone

• “I think people believe in heaven because the don't like the idea of dying, because they want to carry on living and they don't like the idea that other people will move into their house and put their things into the rubbish.”

  Christopher Boone

• “'...I like timetables because they make sure you don't get lost in time.'”

  Christopher Boone

• “If heaven was on the other side of a black hole, dead people would have to be fired into space on rockets to get there, and they aren't or people would notice.”

  Christopher Boone

• “I like really little spaces, so long as there is no one else in them with me.”

  Christopher Boone

• “I do not tell lies.”

  Christopher Boone

• “I find people confusing. This is for two main reasons. The first main reason is that people do a lot of talking without using any words. Siobhan says that if you raise one eyebrow it can mean lots of different things. It can me 'I want to do sex with you' and it can also mean 'I think that what you just said was very stupid.'”

  Christopher Boone

• “But I don't want my name to mean a story about being kind and helpful. I want my name to mean me.”

  Christopher Boone

• “And people who believe in God think God has put human beings on the earth because they think human beings are the best animal, but human beings are just an animal and they will evolve into another animal, and that animal will be cleverer and it will put human beings into a zoo, like we put chimpanzees and gorillas into a zoo.”

  Christopher Boone

• “I said that I wasn't clever. I was just noticing how things were, and that wasn't clever. That was just being observant. Being clever was when you looked at how things were and used the evidence to work out something new. Like the universe expanding, or who committed a murder.”

  Christopher Boone

• “And I said I wouldn't mind things changing if I became an astronaut, for example, which is one of the biggest changes you can imagine, apart from becoming a girl or dying.”

  Christopher Boone

• “And this is why I'm very good at playing chess, because I detach my mind at will and concentrate on the board and after a while the person I am playing will stop concentrating and start scratching their nose, or staring out of the window, and then they will make a mistake and I will win.”

  Christopher Boone

Setting & Locations edit see section history

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• Christopher's Home in Swindon: This is where much of the story takes place. He returns here every day after school.
• Willesdon Junction, London: The capitol of the United Kingdom.
• France: Christopher traveled here as a young boy.

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Glossary edit see section history

• Invigilator: An examination supervisor

Themes & Symbolism edit see section history

• The Struggle to Become Independent: Christopher’s goal in the novel resembles that of many teenage protagonists in coming-of-age stories: to become independent and find his role in the world. Because of his condition, Christopher cannot be as independent as he would like. Since he has trouble understanding other people, dealing with new environments, and making decisions when confronted with an overload of new information, for instance, he has difficulty going places by himself. When he feels frightened or overwhelmed, he has a tendency to essentially shut down, curling himself into a ball and trying to block out the world around him. Christopher, however, still has the typical teenage desire to do what he wants and take care of himself without anyone else telling him what to do. As a result, we see him rebelling against his father in the novel by lying and disobeying his father’s orders. We also see this desire for independence in Christopher’s dream of being one of the few people left on Earth, in which no authority figures are present, and in his planning for college, where he wants to live by himself.Christopher’s struggle to become independent primarily involves him gaining the self-confidence needed to do things on his own and moving beyond his very rigidly defined comfort zone. Solving Wellington’s murder figures into his efforts to be independent in that it forces Christopher to speak with a number of people he doesn’t know, which he finds uncomfortable, and it gives him confidence in his ability to solve problems on his own. The A-level math test also represents an avenue to independence for Christopher. By doing well on the test, Christopher can use the test to eventually get into college, allowing him to live on his own. Finally, Christopher’s harrowing trip to London serves as his greatest step toward independence. The trip epitomizes everything Christopher finds distressing about the world, such as dealing with social interactions, navigating new environments, and feeling overloaded with information. By overcoming these obstacles, he gains confidence in his ability to face any challenge on his own.
• Subjectivity: Christopher’s condition causes him to see the world in an uncommon way, and much of the novel allows the reader to share Christopher’s unique perspective. For instance, although the novel is a murder mystery, roughly half the chapters in the book digress from this main plot to give us Christopher’s thoughts or feelings on a particular subject, such as physics or the supernatural. To take one example, he tells us about the trouble he has recognizing facial expressions and the difficulty he had as a child understanding how other people respond to a given situation, explaining his preference for being alone that we see throughout the novel. As the story progresses, the book gradually departs from the murder-mystery plot and focuses more on Christopher’s character, specifically his reaction to the revelation that his mother never died but rather left the family to live with another man while his father lied about the situation. Throughout these events, the reader typically understands more about Christopher’s situation than Christopher does. When Christopher discovers the letters from his mother hidden in his father’s closet, for example, Christopher invents different reasons to explain why a letter from his mother would be dated after her supposed death. The reader, on the other hand, may recognize immediately that his mother never died and Christopher’s father has been lying to him.Although the reader recognizes that Christopher has an uncommon perspective of the world, the novel suggests that everyone, in fact, has a subjective point of view. By giving detailed explanations of Christopher’s thoughts, the novel allows the reader to empathize with Christopher. Moreover, by pointing out the irrational behaviors of so-called normal people, such as Christopher’s father’s habit of putting his pants on before his socks, the novel implies that Christopher’s eccentricities are actually typical to a degree. As a result, the reader is able to take on Christopher’s perspective as his own and to understand Christopher’s reasons for behaving as he does. Christopher’s point of view loses its strangeness and seems merely unique.
• The Disorder of Life: Christopher has an urgent need to see the world as orderly, and he has a very low tolerance for disorder. He obsesses over schedules, for instance, and even describes the difficulty he had going on vacation with his parents because they had no routine to follow. Moreover, because Christopher has such difficulty connecting to people on an emotional level, he relies heavily on order and logic to understand and navigate the world. The narration, as a result, frequently veers away from the main storyline to discuss topics, such as physics or even the rate of growth of a pond’s frog population, that have clearly defined and logical rules. When the narration moves back to Christopher’s life, the messiness of the social and emotional lives of Christopher and those around him becomes even more apparent. Over the course of the novel, Christopher experiences a series of increasingly destabilizing events, such as learning of Mother’s affair and Father’s deceptions, revealing that Christopher’s narrow focus on order at the beginning of the novel actually keeps him—and the reader—blind to the complex tangle of relationships within his family. This disorder grows increasingly prominent as the story progresses. When Christopher leaves Swindon to find his mother in London, he becomes literally paralyzed at times by the disorder of the massive urban landscape he passes through, which symbolizes the disorder he faces in his family. The novel concludes with the various characters resolving some of their issues, but with their lives remaining essentially as untidy as ever.
• Coping with Loss: Each of the major characters endures his share of loss in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. The novel opens with a death: Wellington’s murder, which prompts Christopher to think back on an earlier moment of loss in his life—the death of his mother. At the time, he coped with his mother’s death by accepting that his mother was gone and moving on, in spite of the fact that he could not say goodbye before she passed. Later, he often remembers her in his writing, sharing detailed memories of her manner of speaking, dress, and temperament. Father also copes with the loss of his wife, Christopher’s mother, though he does so by breaking off contact with her and cutting her out of his—and Christopher’s—life, telling Christopher she is dead. Father’s feelings of loss arise again when Mrs. Shears ends their relationship, and he works through his loss violently by murdering Wellington, effectively setting the events of the novel in motion. Ultimately, the book ends as it began, with a death, this time of Christopher’s pet rat, Toby. Christopher copes by acknowledging that Toby lived a very long life for a rat, and he rejoices in the arrival of a new puppy, Sandy.
• Frustration with Christopher: Many of the characters in the novel become irritated with Christopher at one time or another because of the difficulty they have communicating with him. Christopher has trouble understanding metaphors, such as the dog was stone dead. He also has difficulty with nonverbal forms of communication, such as body language, facial expressions, and even the tone of someone’s voice. He tends to take statements literally and requires very specific instructions in order to follow a command. He says, for example, that when people say “Be quiet” they don’t specify how long he should be quiet for. As a result, we often see characters struggling to make Christopher understand them since their ordinary way of speaking fails to communicate their meaning to him. These exchanges underscore how Christopher’s condition affects his social skills, and they emphasize for the reader the difference in perspective that Christopher experiences compared to the average person.
• Science and Technology: Christopher’s frequent asides about science and technology, such as his fantasies of astronauts and space shuttles and musings about alien life forms and the workings of the human mind, recur throughout the book. Christopher feels most comfortable with subjects that he views as logical, such as physics and math. As a result, he thinks about these topics continually. But Christopher also displays a fascination with subjects that appear to him vastly greater in scope than human life, such as the relationship between time and space or the nature of stars, which he breathlessly describes as “the very molecules of life.” These subjects appear to allow Christopher to put his own life in perspective, helping him to cope with the difficulties he encounters on a daily basis.
• Animals: Christopher often finds solace in interacting with animals and displays great consternation when he sees them harmed. He engages with animals so readily because he finds them easier to understand than people. An animal expresses its wants and needs plainly. Dogs, for example, growl when they feel threatened and wag their tails when they feel happy. Christopher can understand these simple visual cues. He even praises the nature of dogs early in the novel, saying they’re faithful and honest and more interesting than some people. Consequently, animals often serve as a foundation for trust between Christopher and other human beings. Christopher speaks with Mrs. Alexander in part because she cares well for her dachshund, Ivor. Later, after Father hits Christopher when he finds Christopher’s detailed record of his investigation, he takes Christopher to the Twycross Zoo to apologize, because he understands that Christopher will find the environment comforting. Animals also provide Christopher with the companionship he doesn’t find in other people, particularly Toby, Christopher’s pet rat, which serves as Christopher’s constant travel companion. When Toby dies, Father buys Christopher a puppy, hoping to rebuild his trust with Christopher and to provide Christopher with a new companion.
• The Murder Investigation: Christopher’s book begins as a mystery novel about the murder of his neighbor’s dog, but as Christopher’s investigation progresses, it comes to represent Christopher’s search for the truth about his mother and father. As Christopher searches for clues about Wellington’s murder, he finds evidence revealing that his father has been lying to him about his mother’s death. Investigating Wellington’s murder becomes an excuse for Christopher to uncover the secrets that Father has kept from him, and Father’s deception acts as a crime in itself. Ultimately, we learn that Wellington’s murder and Father’s deception constitute separate parts of the same investigation. Father lied to Christopher in large part because of the feelings of loss and anger he felt when Christopher’s mother left him. When Mrs. Shears broke off her affair with Father, those same lingering feelings of loss and anger caused him to lose control and kill Wellington. Christopher’s search for the truth about Wellington essentially leads him to the truth about his mother and father.
• Logic Puzzles, Math Problems, and Maps: Logic puzzles, math problems, and maps symbolize to Christopher the part of the world that is ordered and logical. Accordingly, Christopher uses these items as tools to organize his thinking, like when he uses the so-called Monty Hall problem to explain why his intuition regarding Mr. Shears has been wrong, and they serve as Christopher’s primary means of achieving a sense of security. These items recur continually throughout The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, but they appear most often when Christopher encounters new information that he has not fully processed, or when he experiences a particularly confusing or disturbing event. When his thoughts become jumbled in the train station in Swindon, for instance, Christopher thinks of the visual riddle called Conway’s Soldiers to pass the time. He also regularly uses maps to navigate and achieve his goals. He uses a map when he searches the neighborhood for Wellington’s murderer, again when he attempts to find the train station in Swindon, and yet again in his effort to find Mother’s apartment when he arrives in London. In essence, these different items provide Christopher with a strategy to follow when a problem involves too many variables for him to reach a clear solution.
• The A-level Test in Math: For Christopher, the A-level math test represents a way for him to validate and feel proud of himself. Because of his condition, Christopher is socially inept and attends a school for children with disabilities. But Christopher does not feel that the other children in the school are really his peers. His condition, while a handicap, doesn’t limit him to the extent that the other children’s disabilities limit them. Christopher recognizes this fact and also knows that he is exceptionally gifted in math and science, causing him to feel generally superior to his classmates. Christopher, however, seeks to prove this superiority, and the A-level math test gives him the opportunity. His preoccupation with the test in the later sections of the novel shows how much he wants the opportunity to prove his ability.

Series & Lists edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Mark Haddon (Author)

Other Contributors:

1. Vasja Cerar (Translator)

First Edition edit see section history

Awards edit see section history

• Carnegie Medal (Finalist, 2003, Shortlist)
• Guardian Award (2003)
• Los Angeles Times Book Prize (2003: Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction)
• Man Booker Prize (Finalist, 2003, longlist)
• Salon Book Award (2003)
• Waverton Good Read Award (2003/4)
• Whitbread Book Award (2003: Novel)
• Alex Awards (2004)
• Commonwealth Writers' Prize (2004: Overall Best First Book)
• Exclusive Books Boeke Prize (2004)
• McKitterick Prize (2004)
• South Bank Show Annual Award (2004: Literature)
• Whitbread Book of the Year (2003)
• Abraham Lincoln Award (Finalist, 2006: Illinois High School Award)

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: PZ7.H1165 Cu
• Dewey: Add the Dewey Classification.

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Contains some passages that may cause distress, and some mild swearing. Some young adults may have trouble connecting with the narrator or following story-- good chance for discussion about autism.

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction › Contemporary
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Literary

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

• Wikipedia

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