The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time By Mark Haddon

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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon is a novel about an adolescent diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome. Christopher solves the mystery concerning Mrs. Shear’s dog’s death. This boy, Christopher Boone, has a preternatural ability in mathematics, but is emotionally blind due to his autistic qualities. Christopher also has other qualities: he hates being touched, he hates the color yellow, and does not like being lied to. Truth affects many situations in the novel, because Christopher is sensitive to lying. Mark Haddon portrays truth in the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time to show that lack of truth can lead to the destruction of families.
Truth is shown in this novel because Christopher is kept from …show more content…

Christopher discovers the truth about his mother, however there is more that has not been discovered about the incident. After his father gives him a bath, he walks back into Christopher’s bedroom and commences explaining himself for his deceiving lies. As he explains, he says that it is hard to tell the truth all the time, and sometimes it is impossible. Then his father tells Christopher the truth: “And he said, ‘I killed Wellington, Christopher.’ I wondered if this was a joke, because I don’t understand jokes, and when people tell jokes they don’t mean what they say... Then he held up his right hand and spread his fingers out in a fan. But I screamed and pushed him backward so that he fell off the bed and onto the floor” (Haddon 120, 122). After his father tells him the shocking truth about the dog’s murder, Christopher “wondered if this was a joke”. He could not believe what he was hearing from his father. He was lied to about his mother and now, the death of Wellington. Christopher even “screamed and pushed” his father off the bed as he is trying to apologize to Christopher because he hates him for lying to him. This new discovery puts Christopher in a situation where he has to choose whether if he can trust his father or not, which adds a gigantic crack in the family’s

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