The mind of an autistic person is fascinating and frightening because usually their actions can’t accurately express what their brain is thinking. It is frustrating to try and determine what a child with autism is trying to say, and often results in them being misunderstood. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon, tells the story from the perspective of Christopher Boone, a fifteen year old boy with autism. Chris is brilliant at math and science, but is unable to understand or express emotion. His difficult home life further contributes to his illness; he doesn’t have anyone at home who supports him and tries to help him. His teacher, Siobhan, is his only friend and the only person who tries to help him learn to
The concise way in which he describes things, and the fact that he feels there is no way he could ever be wrong, makes the reader at the very least understand where Chris is coming from. Reading this novel was at times very confusing, but extremely eye-opening as well. While learning the inner workings of Christopher’s mind, I couldn’t help but wonder how he would interact in an inclusion classroom. Chris’ intelligence is unfortunately almost always overshadowed by his autism. Even with the help of an aid, his behavior towards his teachers, and especially his other classmates, may be too much for a teacher to handle. Chris, or any autistic child, would undoubtedly face cruel treatment from fellow students as well. Young teenagers are ruthless to one another, and are even worse when someone stands out as much as a severe autistic child like Chris does. I don’t think inclusion would be the answer for Christopher, but I also don’t think it would be right for his extreme intelligence to be overlooked either. He excels at math, and would be bored in a special education classroom with remedial work. A child like Chris should be mainstreamed into math classes so he could show his abilities and further his intelligence. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is an eye-opening novel. Mark Haddon put an interesting spin on the book by telling it from the point of view from an autistic teenager. This novel is an