The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Nighttime Analysis
Zeitgeist in contemporaneous literature
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time in comparison to other novels and films Introduction
The paper at hand deals with the question whether and to what extent elements of the zeitgeist can be found in Mark Haddon's novel "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time". In order to be able to draw comparisons other pieces of literature and film will be incorporated when focusing on several zeitgeist phenomena.
First of all it might be appropriate to discuss the issue of zeitgeist on its own since the term is highly controversial. Zeitgeist describes the mentality of a particular period by catching the intellectual and cultural climate of an era. Hereby particular attention is …show more content…
In the novel a middle aged-woman explains that she made up very defaming stories such as abuse and rage about her ex-boyfriend who in fact was a wonderful person just to save her from the fact that he simply did not love her enough and thus left her.
Another example for this "constructivist approach" is Philip Roth's novel "The human stain", which predominantly deals with the issue of shaping or changing one's identity. Coleman Silk, the protagonist, eliminates his coloured background and lives the life of a respected white university professor. Thus it might be acceptable to state that the concept of reality, truth and identity plays a very important role in contemporaneous literature. In my opinion Mark Haddon's novel adds another nuance to this particular zeitgeist issue.
Another element of the above mentioned "unexpected" is the fact that Christopher although suffering from Asperger's syndrome sits the A-levels in maths. It is rather unlikely that someone who is an autistic person and attends a special school is striving for higher education. Thus Mark Haddon succeeds in creating an element of surprise that in fact later on appears to be quite conclusive since the protagonist has a lot of talent for maths-like
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time in comparison to other novels and films Introduction
The paper at hand deals with the question whether and to what extent elements of the zeitgeist can be found in Mark Haddon's novel "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time". In order to be able to draw comparisons other pieces of literature and film will be incorporated when focusing on several zeitgeist phenomena.
First of all it might be appropriate to discuss the issue of zeitgeist on its own since the term is highly controversial. Zeitgeist describes the mentality of a particular period by catching the intellectual and cultural climate of an era. Hereby particular attention is …show more content…
In the novel a middle aged-woman explains that she made up very defaming stories such as abuse and rage about her ex-boyfriend who in fact was a wonderful person just to save her from the fact that he simply did not love her enough and thus left her.
Another example for this "constructivist approach" is Philip Roth's novel "The human stain", which predominantly deals with the issue of shaping or changing one's identity. Coleman Silk, the protagonist, eliminates his coloured background and lives the life of a respected white university professor. Thus it might be acceptable to state that the concept of reality, truth and identity plays a very important role in contemporaneous literature. In my opinion Mark Haddon's novel adds another nuance to this particular zeitgeist issue.
Another element of the above mentioned "unexpected" is the fact that Christopher although suffering from Asperger's syndrome sits the A-levels in maths. It is rather unlikely that someone who is an autistic person and attends a special school is striving for higher education. Thus Mark Haddon succeeds in creating an element of surprise that in fact later on appears to be quite conclusive since the protagonist has a lot of talent for maths-like