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Students’ Study Guide for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-

Time Like all well-written books, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon, generates many questions and ideas from many different angles. The purpose of this study guide is to expose you to some of these questions in order to stimulate your interest in the book and to encourage you to talk about the book with others. So: (1) read the book, (2) consult this study guide for suggestions about how to interpret and think about the book's many facets, and (3) bring both book and study guide with you on August 25th for the Discussion Event on August 25th. See you there! (Consult the Summer Reading Program Website for more information about the location of the Discussion Event and other relevant details.) First: An important, 5-minute task Christopher Boone, the narrator of The Curious Incident, is unique. Everything about the novel – its plot, pacing, dialogue, characterization, perspectives, ideas, format, style, themes, and motifs1 – takes its cues from this unusual and engaging narrator. Because Christopher is autistic, the very first thing that you will want to do is to spend a few minutes on-line, looking up Autism and a related cognitive condition, Asperger’s Syndrome, on the web. Knowing something about these conditions will enable you to appreciate Christopher’s “take” on life and to understand more fully how and why he sees things the way he does. General Questions about your Reading Experience The following questions ask you about your impressions – your “gut” response or your subjective response – to the novel. These questions also ask you to explore how this book may or may not be different from other stories that you have read. Read the six questions listed here, attempting to formulate answers, in your mind, to as many as you can.

1. What was your first impression upon reading the first few pages of this novel? In what ways did your first impression about the book change, as you continued to read the story? Why did it change? If your first impressions did not change, why is this the case?

2. What made reading this book an unusual, interesting, engaging, and sometimes challenging experience?

3. Generally speaking, what did you appreciate the most about this story? The least? And why?

1 A motif is a thing, any thing – an object, a color, an article of clothing, a pattern of action, an element of the landscape, a phrase, etc. – that is repeated throughout an entire narrative, and because it is repeated, this thing takes on special significance and adds meaning to the story. For example, Christopher’s many graphs and charts become one of the story’s important motifs.

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Questions about the Narrator Describe anything and everything about Christopher John Francis Boone that you can remember (and if you can’t remember certain things, then take a few minutes to re-read portions of the story that strike your fancy, so that you can get a “feel” for this narrator). Since the whole story is filtered through his gaze, the more you try to see the world through his eyes, the more you’ll come to appreciate the special way in which he tells his story.

1. What does Christopher like? What does he not like? Does he offer any rationalization for his likes and dislikes?

2. What does Christopher see in the world around him? What details and things in this world does he share with his readers? What information about the world does he omit? Why does he include information about some things but omit information about other things?

3. How does he see the world around him? What might be his attitude toward the world around him: other people, animals, his mother and father, his teacher, nature, the neighborhood in which he lives, his home, his belongings, etc.?

4. To what extent does Christopher change or grow during the narrative? 5. Regardless of whether or not Christopher is autistic, in what ways are

Christopher’s viewpoints, attitude, and behavior the same as some of our own? Play “devil’s advocate” for a moment, as ask yourselves how Christopher is more like than unlike us. What do you learn about yourselves when you compare yourselves to Christopher? What do you learn about your world when you see the world through Christopher’s eyes?

Other Characters

1. Who are the other characters whom Christopher discusses or describes? Scan through the book, listing as many persons as you can.

2. How do others respond to Christopher? 3. What function do these persons play in Christopher’s life?

Questions about the Plot

1. What is the plot of this story? What happens first, second, third, and so on? What is the plot of this story, condensed into a few sentences?

2. What are a few examples of Christopher’s digressions from the plot? When he digresses, what does he talk about? Examine the digressions as a group. When does Christopher digress? Is there any rhyme or reason to the timing of his digressions? Is there a pattern to the digressions? How might the digressions relate to the plot in some fashion, or help us understand Christopher better?

3. If the primary plot of the story involves Christopher’s discovery and solving of the neighbor dog’s violent death, what might the novels sub-plots be? How do these sub-plots get revealed through the course of the story? How do the sub-plots relate to the story’s major plot?

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Themes, Ideas, Issues, Cruxes And now for the broad strokes of The Curious Incident. Below are big ideas that this novel generates: ideas, themes,2 issues, problems, etc. Highlight a few that strike your fancy and that you’d like to discuss during the Reading Event in August.

• The autistic world vs. the non-autistic world: shared traits; differing traits • Diversity: being different; being “other”; what makes us similar to or different

from others; inclusion into a group vs. exclusion from a group; disabilities – how you define such a thing and what sets you apart from others

• Education: how we learn; what we teach • Perception: how we see the world around us; what shapes our perceptions • Family: parents; parenting; children; separations; divorces; reconciliations;

functional vs. dysfunctional families • Growth and change: what makes us grow and change; why we stay the same • Emotions: the things we feel, why we feel them, and how we express them • Journeys: the places – literal, figurative – that we go to; the paths that we take to

get there • Epistemology: what we know, and how we know what we know; means of

knowing ourselves and the world • Communication: methods of communicating with others; what we communicate,

what we withhold, and why • Truth and Reality: what is real or true, or not, to you or to others, and what shapes

our notion of truth and reality; the degree to which truth and reality are distinct things.

• Good and Evil: what is good in Christopher’s world? And what is evil? Does he have a concept of good and evil? What is right or wrong to him, and why? How do Christopher’s morals differ from your own?

• Coping: getting by in this world; what we do to survive • Philosophies of life and living • Themes and ideas that you have discovered!

We look forward to seeing you in your discussion groups on August 25th! Between now and then, please direct your questions to me at Reading@nau.edu. Dr. Anne Scott Coordinator, Summer Reading Program Assoc. Professor, English Dept. Assoc. Director, Honors Program Northern Arizona University

2 A theme is a major idea – often, an abstract idea – reinforced by many, if not all, aspects of a particular piece of writing. Usually we express a theme through a single word or a simple phrase: e.g., the theme of justice; the theme of good vs. evil, and so on.