Thursday, August 30, 2007

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).

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Ask me to Read Again, Please?

When I was very young, I read very little outside of what was assigned in the classroom. This behavior was not for lack of love of books, I enjoyed what I needed to read very much, but rather because I had not yet found a genre that interested me. I had tried to read many different types of books but never had become immersed in the reading. It was not until I decided to follow my Dad’s reading habits did I finally become an avid reader.

When I was about eight years old I began to read the children’s version of the Star Wars series. I then fell in love with science fiction novels and could not put the series down until the seventeenth in the series was over. Soon, I began to expand my reading to different kinds of fiction, which included my all-time favorite, Harry Potter. As I grew into my love of reading I discovered many other types of genres could capture my interest, and that I did not need to stick with science fiction and fantasy novels. I have begun to love murder mysteries since my freshman year under Dr. Allison as well as historical fiction, my new-found joy, under Mr. Martin. I am hoping that as I grow in my love and admiration of books I will be able to find even more genres that intrigue me, but for now I have plenty of novels in which I may immerse myself in order to remain occupied in literature.

Since I have found my love in books, I read quite often, possibly to make up for my lack of reading when I was very young. Typically I read about six books in the summer, and when I have no schoolbooks to occupy my reading time before bed, I am always in the middle of a good, newly released fiction novel. I often prefer novels with higher thinking involved, usually including math and reasoning in order to further understand the ending, but at times I find that a simple comical book can keep my attention for two or three days just as well as any other novel. More often than not, though, novels with little thinking tend to lose my attention more quickly than a bad horror movie and are easily discarded, never to be read again.

My writing style is a bit more sparse. Generally, I write for scholarly purposes, and my best writing is done in those subjects of mathematics or researching. I am a very literal person and writing a research paper, to me, is much more intriguing and a more useful way to use my brain waves. As much as reading fiction is more interesting, in writing, my my brain tends to understand researched material and place it together coherently. At times, I wish I were able to write fiction, but often I am much more useful in a research-oriented setting for my writing needs (492).