When I first read Mark Haddon's novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time two years ago, I was enthralled by it, amazed at how much the narrator, Christopher John Francis Boone, reminded me of myself. Re-reading it last year, the novelty was no longer there, so I was able to notice that there were also many ways in which we were quite different.
I've just finished reading it for a third time. It remains one of my favourite books; I still see quite a lot of similarities and quite a few dissimilarities between Christopher and myself; but there were also two things about him which troubled me. First, his propensity to use violence against people who (physically) touch him: I deplore violence except under very extreme circumstances (I always preferred flighting to fighting, although some might argue that's just my bodily weakness and my cowardice). But then, it may just be an instinctive reaction he has no control of.
More importantly, I was troubled by his obsession with sitting a particular maths exam. When he's told, towards the end of the book, that he'll have to wait for a year before that would be possible, he becomes comletely petulant. And it seems to me that this doesn't stem directly from his being autistic, but from his having been (on account of his autism) pampered all his life by those close to him. In other words, it doesn't feel like an autistic, but like a spoilt-child behaviour. After all, it's nothing vital, just a bloody certificate.
Naturally, that doesn't mean I stopped liking him. My real-life best friends tend to have one or two character traits that I highly disapprove of as well. Come to think of it, so do I.
No comments:
Post a Comment