Christopher Boone Isolation

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night time was written by Mark Haddon in 2003 and focuses on the life of a young boy with Asperger’s syndrome. Christopher Boone is a 15 year old boy, who lives with his father in Swindon and must embark on a challenging journey to London, all by himself. Haddon aims the story towards a young, educated adult audience, and explores the notion that Christopher’s personal choices affects relationships. His attitudes towards others and his relationships with them is moulded through his choices. These choices are ultimately a consequence of his need for logic and order, his differences/social isolation, and his unique perspective as an individual. Christopher is dependent on trust as a foundation for everyday life and cannot function without it. He feels alienated from mainstream society due to his condition and the responder is presented
with a powerful exploration of Christopher’s personal choices on his relationships with others.
Haddon attempts to communicate the significance of Christopher’s choices and their impact on his relationships through logic and order. Structure is necessary in Christopher’s life due to his augmented psyche and this forces him to make logical and well thought out choices in his life, and rejecting anything that is alien to him. This is conveyed through his use of footnotes in a self-claimed ‘murder mystery novel’. “3But I wouldn’t have Shreddies and tea because they are both brown.” Christopher distances himself from the reality of society, and needs logic to dominate his world and decisions. As the text progresses, his world begins to collapse and break down into chaos and disorder. Life becomes unorganised and new for him, breaking the natural order in his daily, logical life. “I do not like people shouting at me. It makes me scared that they are going to hit me or touch me and I do not know what is going to happen”. This quote explores Christopher’s feelings towards disorder through direct speech. This discombobulation in his life is a direct consequence of relationships in his life beginning to collapse and Christopher must begin to make irregular and chaotic decisions that impact on his relationships with others in his life.
Christopher’s relationships with others are directly affected by the personal choices he makes; and his social isolation is a major factor that drives his decision making process.
He struggles in social scenarios and cannot read emotions, but flourishes in theoretical areas (such as mathematics). His social isolation is emphasised in his first person narration. “They are lies about things which didn’t happen and they make me feel shaky and scared.” He cannot cope with ‘normal’ social situations and is dislocated from society. This alienation drastically impacts the decisions he makes throughout the novel, and impacts his relationships. “…and it was dark in there and there was no one in there with me …and I did some quadratic equations like 0=437x + 103x + 11.” Christopher’s use of equations allow him to forget about his social struggles, and allow him to detach himself from reality. He functions in his own unique and logical world. This social solitude and Christopher’s unique condition greatly impacts the personal choices made throughout the novel, and the ramifications of these on
relationships.
Haddon uses Christopher’s condition as an avenue for conveying personal choices; and the ramifications of these choices, on his relationships. Christopher’s unique condition results in an emotional incapacity to deal with certain situations. His different mindset is highlighted in his use of simile to describe his feelings towards the colour brown; “When I’m standing on the top of a very tall building… and I’m going to fall over and be killed.” His perspective on certain things illuminates the different way his mind functions. This way of thinking hugely impacts his personal decisions, and ultimately effect Christopher’s relationships. His digressions throughout the text also emphasise his handicapped mindset. “There are 19 cows in the field, 15 of which are black and white and 4 of which are brown and white.” The audience is drawn out of a progressive and chronological narrative in an abrupt and frustrating manner, which mimics the struggle Christopher faces in his own mind. This unique perspective ultimately results in Christopher making unique and ‘abnormal’ personal choices; often affecting his relationships with others.
Throughout the text, Haddon aims to challenge the audience look within their own mindsets and engage in a deep exploration of Christopher’s condition. The responder makes conclusions about the impact of this condition towards social decisions. The personal choices that are impacted by the unique need for logic and order, Christopher’s social isolation, and his alien perspective. These factors challenge the audience to explore the ramifications of personal choices, often impacted by the individual and their current state of being, on their relationships with others and society.