What Are The Struggles In The Curious Incident Of The Dog At Night

The Struggles of Autism

Introduction:

People never truly understand how autism works until they have looked more into the life of someone with autism. In Mark Haddon’s novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, we see the life of a boy named Christopher, who deals with his autism in many different ways. Even though he handles it well, there are still some issues that his autism causes. Throughout his journey, the novel talks about his strengths and weaknesses, his struggle with relationships, and how his own parents deal with his autism.

Character strengths and weaknesses- Christopher deals with many strengths and weaknesses throughout this novel. He is actually really smart and we can easily see this because “[He} knows all the countries of the world and their capital cities and every prime number up to 7,057” (Haddon 2). Even though he is mentally really smart, he has a lot of weaknesses in the common sense and social area. He doesn't understand jokes, emotions, money, or relationships. These are not his only weaknesses, but these are his main ones. He does ask people for help which makes it a little

He talks about his therapist, Siobhan, his father, his mother, and his pet rat, Toby. The person that he was closest to was his father because he basically raised him after his mother left. We can see how his father understood him and his needs because “[He] took him to the doctor. [He] worried himself sick every time he wandered off somewhere at night. [He] went to school every time he got into a fight,” which shows how much he really is there for Christopher even with their misunderstanding at the end (Haddon 197). With this being said, he doesn’t really have close connections with anyone and this is because it is hard for him to be social. He doesn’t really have emotional connections to people and that doesn’t bother