Christopher: The Voice of Autism

Mark Haddon's book The Curios Incident of the Dog in the Night Time explains and puts you in the situation of a 15 year old boy with Asperger's Syndrome. Many of the people that might read this text, will find it unusual or boring, and might easily misunderstand it, seeing as the way Christopher speaks is very different to what we normally hear. The Curios Incident of the Dog in the Night Time thoroughly explains the concept of Autism, and shows you the differences between normal speech and
Christopher's way of speech, and the reaction from other people.

On pages 106 to 107 of the book, Christopher talks about his likes and dislikes in colors. He gives reasons for his opinions, and allows you to really understand why he doesn't like them. When he lists the facts about why he doesn't like yellow, he writes them in bullet points as if he was making a list. After i finished reading the text, I realized that that was how he probably saw it in his mind. Yellow reminds him of Yellow Fever. After the reason, he gives a thorough explanation of what Yellow Fever is, and why it scares him. It is very unlikely that normal people talk that way, and they probably don't think that way either. The way Christopher thinks is elaborated and unique because, one of the symptoms of Aspergers is organization, and making lists seems to help him. He has a very logical way of thinking, and this refers to Vocabulary/ Lexis/ Word Choice, and Evocative Description.



Another usual syndrome of Aspergers is the difficulty of understanding fellow humans. For example, on page 150, he wondered '\“I wondered if this was a joke, because I don’t understand jokes, and when people tell jokes they don’t mean what they say". When Christopher states this, you can understand that he cant percipient a joke. He does not understand weather someone was fooling around, or if they were talking seriously, and he especially doesn't understand the normal chat. HE think that everything is done for a reason, and everything happens for a reason, and that is why he doesn't appreciate sarcasm. His Level of Formality is very scarce, but his Tone and Vocabulary is extremely advance for a 15 year old, which shows how much he knows, and how intelligent he is. His intelligence however, is more of a 'world intelligence' then a 'common sense intelligence'.