Christopher Boone Isolation

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night time was written by Mark Haddon in 2003 and focuses on the life of a young boy with Asperger’s syndrome. Christopher Boone is a 15 year old boy, who lives with his father in Swindon and must embark on a challenging journey to London, all by himself. Haddon aims the story towards a young, educated adult audience, and explores the notion that Christopher’s personal choices affects relationships. His attitudes towards others and his relationships with them is moulded through his choices. These choices are ultimately a consequence of his need for logic and order, his differences/social isolation, and his unique perspective as an individual. Christopher is dependent on trust as a foundation for everyday life and cannot function without it. He feels alienated from mainstream society due to his condition and the responder is presented
He struggles in social scenarios and cannot read emotions, but flourishes in theoretical areas (such as mathematics). His social isolation is emphasised in his first person narration. “They are lies about things which didn’t happen and they make me feel shaky and scared.” He cannot cope with ‘normal’ social situations and is dislocated from society. This alienation drastically impacts the decisions he makes throughout the novel, and impacts his relationships. “…and it was dark in there and there was no one in there with me …and I did some quadratic equations like 0=437x + 103x + 11.” Christopher’s use of equations allow him to forget about his social struggles, and allow him to detach himself from reality. He functions in his own unique and logical world. This social solitude and Christopher’s unique condition greatly impacts the personal choices made throughout the novel, and the ramifications of these on