The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night Time Analysis

In the short story Marigolds, Eugenia Collier writes, “This was the beginning of compassion, and one cannot have compassion and innocence.” How do we know when one has lost his or her innocence? The definition of innocent in free from moral wrong; not corrupted. The definition of compassion is sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others. The sentence is a paradox because when you lose your innocence you now have compassion.
When you are innocent, you get compassion and such examples of this happen in life. If a child does something wrong, they get compassion because they are innocent, but if an adult does the same thing they do not get compassion because they are no longer innocent. For example, In the novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon, Christopher Boone has a mental disability and lives a tougher book than any other normal human. Sometimes he does things such as scream and hit which if he were a normal person his age, he would be punished. Since he has a mental disability, he is innocent and needs compassion. Therefore, if you still have your innocence, you are treated with compassion if you did something wrong. Losing your innocence
She remembers her home town, Dusty, During the great depression. The only thing pretty in the town were Miss Lottie’s Marigolds. One Night, she can’t sleep and his enraged with the fact that her father is so upset. She returns to Miss Lotie’s flowers and takes her rage out on the Marigold’s. As she does this Miss Lottie comes out to her and stands over her destroying the Marigolds. She understands then the difference between childhood and maturity. She then realizes that she cannot have both compassion and innocence. This shows that when she did the horrible act of destroying Miss Lottie's Marigolds she lost her innocence and doesn’t deserve