Final Group Discussion: the curious incident of the dog in the night-time

After I finished reading the curious incident of the dog in the night-time by Mark Haddon, I felt like the ending of the book needed a better resolution. This was one of the things that we talked about in our final discussion for this book. In my opinion, the relationship between Christopher and his father could have still been further explored since the readers of this book didn't really know if Christopher have fully forgiven his father or not.

Another thing that we talked about was about the topic of why Christopher always relied on violence so much. For example, every time he feels danger around him, he would always hold onto his Swiss Army knife:

“And I stood there and I opened my Swiss Army knife in my pocket to make me feel safe and I held on tight” (page 170)

I told my group that the Swiss Army knife symbolizes an object of security for Christopher. It is an object that has the power to provide him with safeness because violence is one of those only things that people like Christopher with Autism seem to think that can truly keep themselves safe.

Another thing that we talked about was one of the major and overall theme of this book. I thought the overall theme of this book was redemption from Christopher's father. The book started out with the death of a dog which later found out by Christopher that his dad was the one that committed the murder. After the experience of Christopher runaway, his dad then realized how important Christopher really is to him, which is why throughout the end of the book, Christopher's dad desperately tried to make Christopher understand that all of the things that he did was for the sake of Christopher. In order to bring redemption to himself, he bought Christopher a dog in the hope of making up for the dog that he killed.

In conclusion, this book is a really good book and it is especially enjoyable because it was written in perspective of a character that have Autism which really made the book unqiue and interesting to read. The only downside that I felt toward the book was that it ended in a way that made me wanted more which really doesn't really seem to be such a bad thing.