In Mark Haddon’s novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time readers see that Christopher is a unique protagonist through exploring the following ideas. In Haddon’s novel, it will become apparent to readers that Christopher’s perspective makes him an unreliable narrator, however, he is unaware of this being his case. Additionally, Christopher’s book is written as a family melodrama even though it started as a murder mystery for the neighbor’s dog and uses visual images to allow the readers to understand on a deeper level how his brain works and how he views the world around him.
During The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Christopher is evidentially an unreliable narrator as he uses interchapters many times throughout the novel. Interchapters do not lead the readers anywhere and do not provide any relevant information on the storyline. This is visible in chapter 17 when Christopher discusses the clear night outside and how he can see the Milky Way. ‘I watched the clear night as we drove towards the town center. It was a clear night and you could see the Milky Way. Some people think the Milky Way is a long line of stars, but it isn’t. Our galaxy is a huge disc of stars millions of light years across and the solar system is somewhere near the edge of the disc’ (page 11). This suggests that Christopher is an unreliable narrator as he leads the readers and himself off from what is going on and from the main storyline. Readers are not getting the response to anything relevant or happening in the story in this chapter, all the readers are receiving is his inner thoughts and the workings of his mind. Another nihilistic chapter is Chapter 13, this is apparent as Christopher is telling the readers he does not understand jokes. The fact that he cannot understand jokes is irrelevant to a family melodrama or murder mystery novel. Christopher is telling the readers how he has to analyze and break down jokes as he cannot grasp the concept of them. “This will not be a funny book. I cannot tell jokes because I do not understand them. Here is a joke, as an example”. (page 10). ‘his face was drawn but the curtains were real’. “If I try to say the joke to myself, making the word mean three different things at the same time, it is like hearing three different pieces of music at the same time which is uncomfortable and confusing and not nice like white noise”. (page 10). Both quotations show the readers how Christopher leads them off onto different topics without meaning to. Christopher misleads the readers just by giving his view, instead of allowing them to understand the storyline clearly from his view.
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In Mark Haddon’s novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time it is evident that Christopher is dealing with family issues creating a family melodrama that readers understand deeper through reading his mother’s letters. Readers view his book as a family melodrama as it contains dramatic family issues, it is real for him and Christopher creates room for connections between his novel and The Heart of Darkness novel which is a novel with genre splicing just like Christopher’s. “I was not a very good mother, Christopher. Maybe if things had been different, maybe if you’d been different, I might have been better at it” (page 133, lines 5 to 8). This quotation proves that Christopher is writing a melodrama novel as he is showing his family problems that have been amplified by his mother and her guilt. She then places her guilt onto Christopher as she is far too immature to handle the truth that is, she is the one at fault for their family falling apart, not Christopher or his situation/problems. However, you can further see that Christopher is writing a family melodrama in the quotation “Mother died 2 years ago”. Christopher was told his mother died for the majority of his childhood, it took him finding letters she had sent that his father had hidden for him to find out that she had not died, she had run away. This also connects with the quotation “And you crouched down on the floor and put your hands over your ears … I told you to behave … But you shouted” (pages 133 and 134, lines 20 to 24). Christopher’s mother is blaming Christopher’s troubles and problems to be the reason for her leaving and for her not being in his life at all.
Due to Mark Haddon choosing to have an unreliable narrator, he is providing the audience with a new view on how people deal with ASD and Aspergers. Christopher is direct in his methods of communication however very specific in those directions. This just seen when Christians that he was “I was unable to say what these meant” (page 2). This quiet allows readers to have the ability to grasp the highlights of Christopher’s inability of social communicate socially socially and socially expressions. For example, Christopher and his father spread their fingers apart and let their fingertips tight as a way of showing their love for each other “I do not like hugging people, so we do this instead, and it means that he loves me” (page 21) shows how Christopher views his father’s love for him and how it is utilized. This is shown to a deeper understanding as the text is written in a way that shows how Christopher thinks and speaks in his life. When Christopher is trying to highlight something, it is often found that he is using capitalism and visuals for readers to gain insight into how he views and understands things. However, Haddon preserves the view of the world through Christopher magnificently in the way that he allows the view to come through for a teenage boy with ASD and Asperger. This is achieved when readers begin to grow empathy for Christopher and those who think differently from the ‘normal’.
On the whole, it is evident that Mark Haddon portrays Christopher to be a unique protagonist in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and this creates Christopher be seen as an unreliable narrator in a way that he is unaware of this, however, Christopher is writing a family melodrama and using the representation of visuals to explain his creative way of thinking that is not often approached as he approaches it.
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