Dog In The Nighttime Theme

We see the world very much like an optical illusion. Consider this: an image dominated with three Pac-Man shaped circles, with the missing sections arranged to form the corners of the triangle. In the illusion, one will see a different colored triangle lying on top of three circles, when in reality there are simply just three circles with triangles cut out. Neurologically speaking, this is because our brains immediately fill in visual gaps to create a more wholesome and less confusing picture, as a picture with definite edges and shapes is less confusing and easier to process than a picture filled with shapeless blank space. Similarly, this applies to our perception of everyday life. It is often extremely difficult for humans to understand
Christopher is constantly searching for logical facts and scientific conclusions in order to explain the things he is seeing. In the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon enforces a societally accurate theme that people try to fill in gaps in their knowledge by explaining things in their own way. The theme of the book is established through Christopher’s reaction to the letters he finds, and his description of saccades and the homunculus. While talking about the similarities between a computer and the human brain, Christopher criticizes those who believe in a homunculus, which roughly translates to “a little man” (118). This homunculus is thought by many to be the embodiment of the human mind; the person who controls the brain. Christopher explains that the brain performs saccades, which occur “when your eye flicks from one point to another [and] you don’t see anything at all and
Before the Common Era and for hundreds of years afterward, humans were unsure of how the world worked. Science was barely developed enough to explain the major features of life that many of these people had questions about. Consequently, such confusion leads to the easiest explanation: God. When “God said, Let there be light… there was light” (American Standard Version, Genesis. 1.3), and no further clarification was relevant or necessary. God had created such features of the Earth because “it was so” (Genesis. 1.9). This recurring theme continues to occur throughout the bible, including the formation of man; “and Jehovah God formed man of the dust on the ground… and man became a living soul” (Genesis. 2.7). These explanations began to be less widely accepted as science became prevalent, most notably in the Scopes Monkey Trial during the 1920s. Following Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, many, including teacher John Scopes, wanted to teach this scientifically proven explanation for human development in schools. However, a great controversy was sparked in Tennessee when the fundamentalist Board of Education refused to teach anything but the story of Adam and Eve. The outcome of the trial found Scopes guilty. This trial represented the greater question of whether these explanations of life were needed with the introduction of science, and proved that people have