Christopher from The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon and Holden from J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye

Christopher from The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon and Holden from J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye

Holden from "The Catcher in the Rye" by J.D Salinger and Christopher

from "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" by Mark

Haddon are both two very interesting first person narrators in many

different ways. Holden is a 17years old boy having difficulty staying

in schools more than 6 months because he doesn't work enough and

Christopher is 15 years old and has asperger's syndrome. This means

that he has no feelings. The narrators are similar in some ways for

example in the way of talking; they both have a restricted vocabulary.

But there are more differences than similarities for instance Holden's

favourite subject is English because he is creative and Christopher

prefers math and science since he seems to like facts. Their lives are

very different and this is proven in their totally opposite

personalities. Even though Christopher and Holden have semblances,

Holden's creativity and personality makes him a more appealing

narrator.

Although Christopher has a unique way of talking, we can relate more

to Holden's vocabulary and diction, which makes the reader understand

him better. When looking at the similarities, both of these first

person narrators make detailed descriptions, but usually on very

different topics. Christopher's descriptions are mainly about details

that a normal person would not care about, such as the shape of the

room he is in, and how many litres of air there is in it or how many

holes there are in a shoe. Holden's descriptions are more on his

surroundings and the atmosp...

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... has affected their

personality. Christopher doesn't try to understand people by himself,

he will need to ask and if he still doesn't understand he will walk

away. Holden has no problem at interpreting emotions but he hates

people who hide them, "phoney people". Though Christopher as a

narrator is a very interesting and original point view, his illness

makes his personality, his way of talking, his lack of imagination and

of understanding people makes him monotonous and uninteresting. Holden

is a narrator we can relate with because he is a teenager and

sometimes we can recognize his thoughts as our own. Christopher is

also to far away from us, it is impossible to relate to him, he is too

robot like. Although both narrators are very interesting, I can relate

to one and not the other and this makes him a better narrator.