Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time: Depiction of Aspergers Syndrome

Novels Depiction of Asperger’s Syndrome The story The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, written by Mark Haddon, is a story about a young boy with growth from childhood into adulthood. It is about a boy with Asperger’s Syndrome, named Christopher, who goes on a journey to find his long lost mother and matures a lot along the way. The disorder that Christopher has is called Asperger’s Syndrome, which is very similar to Autism. Throughout the novel, the reader begins to have a good understanding of this rare disorder. Christopher displays many characteristics that are associated with Asperger’s Syndrome. One of the major problems that people with Asperger’s Syndrome display is their inability to comprehend other people’s emotion. People with Asperger’s have difficulty understanding when others are sad, angry, depressed, happy or any other emotions. This inability to understand others emotions are shown a lot throughout the story. An example of Christopher’s lack of understanding for human emotions is simply based on the fact that Christopher tries to learn about emotions with Siobhan. Siobhan would draw faces that would display an emotion and Christopher would have to guess at what emotion is being shown (2-3). The fact that Christopher struggles with knowing the meaning of some of these faces shows just how difficult it is for him to understand emotions. He even goes on to say how he would carry these pictures with him so he could take them out and match the picture with what face the person is making. This shows that it is very difficult for Christopher to understand these emotions in a real-life situation and not just in the classroom. This is very common for people with Asperger’s. They can have an understanding of emotions by learning about them, but they struggle with applying this knowledge to real-life situations. Another common problem that many people with Asperger’s face is clumsiness of social interaction. They tend to

Cited: • Hadon, Mark. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. New York: Random, 2004. • Asperger’s Syndrome. 23 October 2007. 24 October 2007. • Ozbayrack, Kaan. Asperger’s Disorder Homepage. 19 October 2007. 24 October 2007. • Asperger’s Syndrome Fact Sheet. 22 October 2007. 24 October 2007.