Christopher Boone

RESEARCH PAPER

A haunted house with the lights on during a hot summer day in August doesn't seem scary at all. However, a haunted house with the lights off on a dark Halloween night does. Context matters, and finding the proper situation for the right attributes is a must. This also applies to mental health and disabilities in society and how it’s handled among the mass. Disability and mental health is approached in the wrong way by our society in part creating more trouble. In The Curious Case of The Dog In The Nighttime by Mark Haddon, Christopher Boone is seemingly diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome (Normalcy). Christopher throughout the novel is met with challenges that come up due to his “conditions” that illustrate many issues with

Christopher’s reaction to the death is unique, in that he begins to hug the dog and ponder about who could’ve killed it (Haddon 3). Throughout the novel, Christopher has a numerous amount of quirks that point towards the direction of “different” or “off”. Haddon uses Christopher’s reaction to Wellington’s death to point out flaws in our society, in that most of society would consider his reaction as the aforementioned “different” and “off”. In reality, Christopher is doing nothing wrong rather than seeing things in a different way. It also illustrates the mark society places on disability in that different reactions from people with disabilities is wrong. It also shows the flaw of society in that most would label Christopher as being off rather than

His character was patched by taking habits, opinions, patterns of thoughts and bits from a variety of people whom would never be classified as having a disability(Transcript). Even though all the variety of people weren’t diagnosed with a disability, it pushes the question of begs the question of what’s the cut off line for when people are diagnosed with something? Also, how many people that are diagnosed actually autistic, especially with the increasing number of autistic children (How Common). In the 1980s, autism prevalence was reported as 1 in 10,000, as compared to 2014 that has 1 in 68 children being diagnosed with autism (How Common). Society is making it easier to just be diagnosed with Autism rather than just being unique. As aforementioned, Haddon wrote Christopher’s character using traits of “normal” people (Transcript). After reading the novel, other “normal” people caught themselves beginning to think like Christopher after reading the novel (Transcendence). This shows the faults in how disability and autism is perceived, as people have the same symptoms as Christopher but are able to proceed as normal people but people like Christopher aren’t. This also builds into how they develop, as growing up diagnosed with a “disability” has a lack of “normal”