Weekly Reading Response # 2

NAME: Fiona Jackson DATE: October 19th, 2010

TITLE: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night -Time TIME: 2 HOURS

AUTHOR: Mark Haddon  PAGES: 1-106

TOTAL PAGES THIS WEEK: 106 Pages 

Something I have found really interesting about this book is that the main character, Christopher, is autistic. I am not positive about this but I am pretty sure. It is interesting because it is like he is writing the book, so it shows exactly how he thinks about everything. The way things make him feel. It is interesting because he is a really mathematical person so he thinks about everything really detailed. He has a photographic memory and he kind of explained what it is like to have a memory like that which is cool because it is so different than the way my memory is. This boy is so smart, but he is difficulty to talk to because his brain works a different way then everyone else's. I can't tell whether his parents understand what exactly is different about him. They clearly know something is different about him though because there are some things that he can't tolerate. for example, he won't eat anything that is yellow or brown, his food can't be touching, he has a game about the colors of cars which determine what kind of day he is going to have, he doesn't like to be touched, and would much rather be alone then with people. 

This book reminds me of a movie I watched once called Temple Grandin. That movie was about a girl who had autism and was also super smart and didn't like to be touched. This is the main reason that I think that Christopher is also autistic. The two characters had lot's of similarities, and it is interesting to compare the way the different writers/directors showed the way the autistic people think. In the movie they kind of showed a picture for everything she was thinking. In the book the author does a similar thing but uses words to describe it instead of a picture. I really think that it is interesting how people like this's brain works. They are just on a whole different level than everyone else. For example, in the movie, there was a scene where Temple was in class, and they were supposed to be reading out of a French textbook. It appeared that Temple wasn't reading the page, so the teacher got up and went over to her and asked why she wasn't reading. She replied that she already read it, even though the teacher had just told them to read it. The teacher took away the book and asked what it said. She recited the whole page like she was reading it from her memory. In the book, there is a point where Christopher describes his memory as a being a film. When people ask him to remember things he can simply press rewind, fast forward, or pause. It's the same concept. 


At one point in the book, Christopher's father told him to never do a list of things. 
1. Not to mention Mr. Shears name in their house. 
2. Not to go asking Mrs. Shears about who killed the bloody dog.
3. Not to go asking anyone about who killed that bloody dog.
4. Not to go trespassing in other peoples gardens. 
5. To stop this ridiculous bloody detective game. 
Christopher clearly understands this, but will not give up on his detective game. He just decides to do it in ways that his father did not clearly say. Which shows that he is very clever, but that his mind kind of works like a young child's. Kind of manipulative. But that he just doesn't understand when he upsets people. It must be really hard not to get frustrated with him really easily. I don't think that I would be able to keep as calm with someone like that as his father does. And I think that that is a big part of why his mother ran off. Because she really did feel like she couldn't take it anymore and that it would be better for everyone else if she just left. I can understand how she might of felt. But I am not saying that what she did was right.