Curiously Human

The novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, shows insight into the depths of a child’s true humanity and perspective on life. We, as readers, learn about the world through the eyes of a child who is paranoid and uncomfortable in the world in which he lives because of his autism. His humanity is apparent through his innate fear of the world, which is widely shown through his open likes and dislikes of the world, as well as through is obvious misunderstanding of human nature in general. In a sense, his human traits are highlighted by his eccentric behavior and through his behavior we further understand humans.

Through his eyes we, as readers, see the world through a scope not previously known to our one-dimentional minds. Each person in this world has experienced fear and uncertainty about the unknown and are concerned about our individual paranoia, but never have I experienced fear so explicit and engrained that every detail of the experience seems real. In the novel, the main character invokes his feelings with elaborately detailed desciptions of everything around him. Christopher explains that he does “not like people shouting at [him]. It makes [him] scared that they are going to hit [him] or touch [him] and [he] does not know what is going to happen (Haddon, 4).” Rather than explaining the way he feels in general, the most important part to his story is explaining the way he feels about touch, colors, and numbers. Every person in the world attributes good and bad qualities to certain aspects in life. People have favorite colors and hate certain smells. The aspect of pain versus pleasure that sets Christopher apart from a typical human being who simply feels good or bad by these qualities, is that he forms his mood and decisions around the appearance of certain colors, numbers, and feelings. Through out the novel, Christopher is very specific about his likes and dislikes, such as his hatred for yellow and his love for the color red. He even goes as far as dieing his food red in order to make it more favorable to him. The examination of numbers and colors and specific descriptions that seem minute and unimportant to the majority of the population are brought to central attention by Christopher. Human attributes of dissatisfaction and gratification are displayed in larger view because his personality constraint brings both of these daily notices into central observation so that the reader understand how Christopher’s mind is filled with the most minute details.

Christopher attempts to interpret humans around him in order to gain a fuller understanding of life. He does not understand human beings because they lie, and they express their ideas and feelings through expressions rather than words. The main character embellishes upon human nature by placing it into a realm of misunderstanding. To Christopher’s autistic mind, expressions and moods have no validity, and words are the only sourse of truth and understanding between individuals. Christopher Boone explains how he believes humans are overly complicated by describing why he likes dogs. He says “ You always know what a dog is thinking. It has four moods. Happy, sad, cross and concentrating (Haddon, 3-4).” Because of this alternate perspective on human issues that seem obvious and normal to most of society, reading this novel shows a reader that all people do not think as he or she does, but rather, all people see the world through differently colored lenses. Christopher simply possesses a more defined lens. He even goes as far as drawing different happy faces in order to compare people’s expressions to his paper so that he can verify what their expressions mean. Because of his lack of understanding of human moods and expressions, Christopher listens very closely to words and takes all words to be truth. He cannot understand why people say things that have no place in reality when he cannot even imagine something that has not occurred to him. Because his mind thinks differently from the majority of the world’s minds, through this novel we learn a great deal about the effects of autism on a family and a child.

Every portion of the novel reflects the main character’s feelings and experiences. We, as readers, see through his eyes and feel what he feels because we are told only the portions of the scene most important to him. We see and understand his emotions and pain because, most people understand that humans, in general, are confusing creatures, but most of us accept the human flaws of lying and acceptance of our dislikes where Christopher, avoids all contact with those things of which he loathes. Christopher is a symbol of humanity because he shows the flaws and confusions that humans innately possess (796).