Essay

Chapter 149 of Mark Haddon’s 'A Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night- time' can be seen as an important turning point in the novel as a whole. In this essay I am going to examine, explore how, I intend to examine how Haddon presents two characters, Christopher and his mother in this chapter.

There are a number of ways in which Haddon presents the character of Christopher. For example, Christopher uses simple language. In his narration of the novel, He is also very repetitive and he uses the conjunction 'and' a lot when describing his conversations with people. Also, his language is not very sophisticated and he is unable to use smiles and metaphors. This could imply that Christopher has learning difficulties. He becomes dizzy when his father moves the furniture and has to move them back to where they were originally were. Another major characteristic of Christopher is his lack of understanding for other people. For example, earlier in the novel when he meets Mrs Alexander for the first time, he seems to be on edge and not really very sure if he could trust her, which is understandable, but when he meets her for a second time, he still cannot trust her and says "I do not talk to strangers" even though she seemed nice and expressed her friendliness. In the chapter when we as readers realise that his mother is not dead he still doesn't understand and calls it 'another mystery to solve'. In a way, Christopher's narration of the novel is humorous as we would act in a different way to the different situations that
Christopher was in. Many people could think of him as a strange person, but he most likely has a learning difficulty or condition like Asperger's or autism.
Another characteristic of Christopher that Haddon gives him is that he likes everything to be organised and in its place. This is another implication that
Christopher may have a learning disability.

In chapter 149 of Mark Haddon's 'A Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night- time', there are a large number of ways in which Christopher's mother is presented and developed, as she isn't mentioned much throughout the novel because she is portrayed as dead by Christopher's father. Unfortunately,
Christopher believes this. In the first letter sent by Christopher's mother,
Haddon implicitly suggests that she isn't very well educated or she has a sort of learning disability like Christopher. This would explain why Christopher does have a condition, as his related to is mother who might also have one. She often spells words wrong and she gets the punctuation wrong as well. However, this could be down to the fact that she didn't have a very good education when she was younger. In the novel she describes herself as a bad mother, although even when she gets