Over the summer, I wanted to read Mark Haddon’s novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time because I don’t usually read mysteries, making this a new genre. I normally read books in print format, but this year, I decided to do something different. This year, I listened to the audiobook to see if listening to a story orally makes a reader feel different from reading an actual book. After all, stories were originally created and passed down from generation to generation orally before they were written languages, and I wanted to see how society has changed from listening to stories, to reading words on paper. What I discovered was very interesting.
The novel is told from the perspective of a 15-year old boy with a specific type of autism. With that in mind, Haddon used grammar fitting to that of an autistic boy. The entire book was filled with short and straight to the point statements surrounded by many conjunctions, and the narrator digressed profusely into facts on science or humanity. If this novel were a musical, it would be filled with a staccato style that seemed chaotic. However, the narrator is very clear and certain on his thoughts and facts, and if dissected sentence by sentence, the story would be considered quite orderly. For example, Christopher, the autistic boy, created a system for predicting good and bad days. He wrote:
“Mr. Jeavons, the psychologist at school, once asked me why 4 red cars in a row made it a Good Day, and 3 red cars in a row made it a Quite Good Day, and 5 red cars in a row made it a Super Good Day, and why 4 yellow cars in a row made it a Black Day…He said that I was clearly a very logical person, so he was surprised that I should think like this because it wasn’t very logical.
I said that I liked things to be in a nice order. And one way of things being in a nice order was to be logical. Especially if those things were numbers or an argument. But there were other ways of putting things in a nice order. And that was why I had Good Days and Black Days.”
This description seems simple when taken apart, but when put together, confusing and chaotic. I found the idea of a book filled with orderly pieces, yet being so chaotic, fascinating. It made me question the ideas of the enlightenment era: humans strive for order, but can too much order be chaotic? Haddon has proved this question true.
Another aspect of listening to this story brought up other fascinating points. I listened to this book out loud everywhere, including the car and a radio, so my family could listen to the story as well. What I found intriguing was when my father started getting a little annoyed at the boy when he used prime numbers for chapters, digressed into other topics, wrote in a staccato style, and described orderly subjects chaotically. My father’s annoyance made me realize, that this story is actually a mirror to the reader. It will force the reader to look at his or her actions when reading the novel, and the reader will realize that he or she is becoming annoyed over something that isn’t “normal”. Life is not normal due to human nature, for the order of being normal leads to chaos, as Haddon examined.
With the reader feeling unsatisfied with an “abnormal” story, the novel also shows the reader his or her rejection to humans with defects. My father was annoyed at the style in which the boy spoke: filled with straightforward statements and conjunctions, yet that was how the boy thought. Since he had autism, his mind did not function as a “normal” human’s would. This novel showed me that man has continued to deny the “abnormal” equality in society. I found this novel moving and eye-opening, and I hope that this novel will bring those looked down upon justice.
