the curious incident of the dog in the night-time

a novel by mark haddon

The narrative progression through this story is a rather interesting one, not only for the series of events and what the story ends up being actually about, but how we the readers understand what the story ends up being about despite being in the first person perspective of an approximately 15-year-old autistic boy. For example, somehow I got a pretty good understanding of the emotional trauma and struggling of the adults around Christopher, even though his narrative really only traces events and his own feelings of comfort or fear. He is unable to understand other people's internal emotional states. Ironically, one of the adults makes a comment to him about how Christopher doesn't care about anyone else. This is ironic because Christopher is mentally incapable of empathizing whereas the character who makes the comment is physiologically capable of it, yet has caused much emotional destruction for the people around him out of his own selfishness.
hm.

Whenever I read things from the perspective (or approximated perspective) of autistic people, I tend to think they make a lot of sense (granted, my only references so far are this book, and Animals in Translation by Temple Grandin).

Christopher, the narrator, has a world based on rules and observations. He's very observant, and very good at puzzles because he's good at thinking in rules. He has rules for himself - like how seeing 4 yellow cars in a row means it is a Black Day
and he is allowed to not eat or talk to anyone and sit by himself. But 5 red cars in a row is a Super Good Day, which means something good will happen and it's ok to take risks. He also has rules for how to interact with non-autistic people since he cannot distinguish emotional variances between happy and sad and doesn't understand metaphors. It was very interesting to think about how I might explain 'normal' human actions or expressions to a person like Christopher.

But, I didn't have to try very hard. I think I'm very easily influenced by what I read or see, because it's easy for me to get into the mindset of whatever I'm reading. After I finished reading the book, I could feel my thought processes changing. The thoughts were still normal for me, but they were phrased differently in my head. Instead of just getting an idea and doing it, especially in relation to other people, my brain started listing out the chain of reasoning between how I expected other people to think and how to most conveniently comply with it. They were things I would've done anyway, and I was thinking just as quickly, but with a running list of social observations, conventions, and actions derived from them that is usually more intuitive or automatic.

I had to shake myself out of it because I knew it was going to seriously impair my ability to interact and connect with other people.

I knew this because it felt very much like an experiment/game I tried sometime in high school - junior or senior year I think - in which I decided to go for my own version of standard English linguistic purism and take everyone literally. People would ask what I was doing, and I would tell them. They'd ask what I'd been up to, and I would tell them. They'd ask how I was, and I would tell them.

I think this was probably very annoying. One of my friends seemed to remember this and verified that it was annoying. Nobody told me it was annoying at the time.
And, I found out that nobody actually cares how you're doing, even if you tell them (especially if you're annoying). So you can tell them anything you want.

The thing was that I sort of forgot that I was playing a game/experiment. I started thinking and responding literally automatically. I didn't understand why it seemed to be so difficult to communicate smoothly with other people, and felt very helplessly detached from everyone.

Then I remembered that I was still taking everyone literally, and most people don't do that. So I worked myself back into interacting in the ways that everyone else did, and that did the trick.

But, I wonder if that's a little like how people with autism or similar conditions feel.


I thought this quote was interesting, especially considering my selection of quote for 12.31/06

"...and because there is something they can't see people think it has to be special, because people always think there is something special about what they can't see."