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

Based off the first group discussion that we had in class, it had given me a lot of of new insights on "the curious incident of the dog in the night-time" by Mark Haddon. One thing that we talked about was the characteristic of Christopher who is the main character and narrator. We talked about the uniqueness of the way how his mind work and how it impacted the story. This conversation led to the topic about the relationship between Christopher and his mother.

I believed that Christopher didn't really care about his mother as much because the way he acted toward his mother death didn't seem really sad at all:

“But when Mother died she didn't go to heaven because heaven doesn't exist” (page 32)

The view from the people in my group, however, were different from mine. They pointed out that Christopher do care about his mother but because of his disorder, he is not able to express it fully in the book. This is one part from the book that someone in my group mentioned to prove their point about Christopher did showed affection for his mother:

“I said I would make her a Get Well card, because that is what you do for people when they are in hospital” (page 37)

Even though, this was suppose to proved their point on how Christopher shared affection for his mother, I could also say it helped prove my point even more. The part of this sentence that said “this is what you do for people in hospital” made me feel that Christopher made the Get Well card just because he felt obliged to do so and now from his own good will.

Another thing that my group talked about was the way how this book is written. It is written in a way where it would jump from the “main” story about the dog incident to telling more about Christopher himself. I thought this was pretty interesting because it made it felt like I was reading two books in one. Someone in my group also mentioned that the book was written this way because it reflected the way how Christopher think since his mind doesn't work exactly like the average person would. I thought these conversations were quite interesting, and it definitely made me think more about the uniqueness of this book.