Welcome to My World

What strikes me the most about Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime is how evidently blunt the writing it is and where the bluntness comes from. Because we are reading the story from the perspective of a young boy with Asperger syndrome, we receive a very straightforward narrative with very little description or speculation. Christopher, because of his condition, is extremely deliberate in anything that comes across his mind. He doesn’t like yellow and brown. He likes red. Different types of food on the same plate cannot touch one another. There is no real designation for why he likes these things those ways. There is even a chapter about why Christopher doesn’t like yellow and brown, but it provides no true reason for why he hates yellow and brown, but creates more of a list of yellow and brown things. The idea behind this is that Christopher believes that when the reader notices his “list” they will automatically realize why yellow and brown are terrible.

The clear-cut decisions and thoughts bring up an interesting style of narrative. Some would argue that it waters down the true quality of the prose, but in the case of Mark Haddon, that fact is almost the idea behind the novel. Everything is very frank to Christopher, thus making things like finding out about his mother and Mr. Shears just seem to be something that happened, instead of the horrible affair that is truly behind the discovery. The lack of adjectives helps to make frightening sections of the novel, like Christopher’s father becoming very angry unfold in a slow motion style. They are occurring with no real emotion and because of the lack of emotion, the narrative becomes extremely powerful.

Although the subject matter is entirely different, I couldn’t help being reminded of The Road by Cormac McCarthy. The same style of writing is employed, giving the narrative a blunt side that takes away from the beauty of writing but enhances the experience of the novel. Horrible moments become that much more terrible because of their exposure to the reader. Each sentence is naked, creating a strong piece of writing.

I believe that the experience that the reader has when moving through the narrative of The Curious Incident is the important part of the novel, and the idea that Mark Haddon is looking for. He presents it to the reader very obviously in Christopher’s perspective, but also through his actions and thoughts because he forces the reader not only into seeing the way Christopher sees, but also the way he thinks, and the affect that it has on the reader. One cannot help reading The Curious Incident and being shocked at some points in the novel, and if you are shocked then Mark Haddon has achieved his goal.