Mark Haddon’s “The curious incident of the dog in the night-time” narrator Christopher Boone is a special boy. Throughout the book, one learn that Christopher has a hard time understanding social behaviour, touching, irony, etc. He himself says that he has “behavioural problems”. The blurb on the other time states that he has Asperger’s Syndrome; an autism spectrum disorder that characterized by significant difficulties in social interaction and nonverbal communication. Neither the author nor the book states this. Can this extra information in the blurb change the readers’ experience and focus in the book?
Haddon never planned for Christopher to be an autistic boy when he started writing, Christopher formed that way …show more content…
When one read that the book is about a boy with Asperger’s Syndrome, one will subconsciously take that with them. The book is no longer about a different way of looking and learning, but about a boy with Asperger’s Syndrome. Even though the book takes a stand that there is indeed “something wrong” with Christopher, it only supplement the charm of the book and the narrator, without focusing on the sickness itself. For many the blurb will not have too much to say, but either you start out on the book knowing he has Asperger’s syndrome, or you have not. Even though it is impossible to say whether it would have made a difference since no one can forget impressions and memories from the book, there is a chance that those who read the blurb would have taken a prejudice with them, shaping their impressions. For those who read the blurb one of the consequences could be that they truly believe that this is the way people with Asperger’s think and see the world, when Haddon never meant for Christopher to have the