The Curious

“The Curious Incident… shows that all people are capable of change if they have a goal they really care about.” Discuss.
Mark Haddon’s novel, The Curious Incident of a Dog in the Night-time, is a bildungsroman about 15 year old boy with Asperger’s. As you would expect from this genre of novel, Christopher the main character and narrator, undergoes significant change in the pursuit of his personal goal. Together with other key characters who likewise change, this novel suggests that everyone is able to achieve transformation providing they are motivated by a strong objective.
The main character who demonstrates the ability to change is the protagonist Christopher. At the beginning of the novel, Christopher does not like talking to strangers or unknown situations. However he is driven to overcome these insecurities by his determination to find out who killed his neighbour’s dog Wellington. In order to solve this mystery, we see that he overcomes his reluctance to interact with other people, not only Mrs. Alexander but his other neighbours Moreover, once he has established that his father was the culprit, Christopher’s goal is to leave Swindon and find his mother in London. This resolution forces him to deal with the noise, unfamiliarity and strangers in the subways on his route to the city. Whereas formerly Christopher would “do groaning” or scream, he manages to overcome the stress on the journey to his mother, spurred on the thought “I can do this”. Once again, he successfully interacts strangers along the way, like the policeman on the subway, or the person at the ticket office. At the very end of the novel, Christopher himself acknowledges the personal development he has experienced through pursuit of his goals, noting that “I was brave… and that means I can do anything.” Thus Christopher himself realizes that his twofold goals solving the murder and locating his mother, have resulted in change.
In addition, Christopher is not the only character who undergoes change through the course of the novel. Christopher’s mother and father both achieve some degree of personal transformation. Initially, Christopher’s mother is unwilling to compromise her notion of what it is appropriate for Christopher to eat, insisting that he “eat[s] something healthy.” However, by the end of the book, contrary to her insistence that she cannot “change” her impatience she clearly has managed to imitate the patient actions of his father since she is able to cook for and live with her son. Christopher’s father likewise achieves some degree of change, in that he becomes able to better manage his temper at the end of the novel. Initially he is quite impulsive, evident from when he swears to policeman at the police station and from his response to Christopher’s mother. His rage even leads him to kill the dog Wellington, in order to retaliate against Mrs. Shears. By the end of the novel, however, Christopher’s father has clearly got much better control over his emotions and rather than murdering a dog, is in fact purchasing the puppy for his son. h promises Christopher that “you can trust me”, indicating that he has learnt he must demonstrate his reliability to is son with something tangible (i.e. the dog) Both Christopher’s mother and father therefore become more accommodating of Christopher through the course of the book, motivated in this change by the desire to be good parents for their son.
Even though the novel shows everybody is capable of change if they have a goal, this is not to say that complete transformation is possible. Although Christopher does achieve some degree of change, it is clear that he does retain a great deal of his character. Form the start through to the end of the novel, Christopher has autistic traits. At the beginning he is obsessed with details, does groaning when he is afraid, uses mathematical thinking to calm down and is unable to interpret metaphorical speech or jokes. While Christopher does take an adventure which changes his character for the better, he is nonetheless left with many of the unusual features which he had at the beginning of the narrative.
Haddon’s narrative shows that personal goals play a fundamental role in one’s life and can lead to significant change. Both Christopher and his mother undergo a noticeable transformation in the pursuit of their goals. These changes are not complete and radical; Christopher remains obsessive and socially unusual and his mother does not magically become able to cope with her son and his disorder without considerable effort. Yet it remains evident that these characters do manage to make change which would not have been possible were it not for their motivating goals.