Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-time Essay

There are many ways in which Haddon tells the story in chapter 97 and he uses a variety of methods to show this.

He takes an interest in a dog which is a dachshund. The dachshund is the dog of Mrs Alexander. He uses the basic phrase “I like dogs” because he does not know how to express his emotions more naturally or correctly due to his autism. Up to this chapter Christopher’s story had began to fade out and It had hit a dead end. This chapter is more of   a ‘get out jail free card’ than an actual planned chapter.

We get to find more out about Christopher’s condition in this chapter   too and how insecure and scared he is about meeting or talking to new people. When he first meets Mrs Alexander he tries to ignore here because he cant do ‘chat’ and describes it as ‘boring’.

Like I said before, this chapter is mainly to bring the story back to life. Mrs Alexander having this information gives Christopher the impetus to go forward and carry on his investigation. Although Christopher doesn’t usually talk to strangers, he kicks the habit because Mrs Alexander says she as some information about his mum for him and what happened to the dog.

Also this contradicts and makes Christopher an hypocrite to what he said earlier on in the book. He states that he cant tell lies, yet he tells his father that he wont carry on with investigation and as soon as Mrs Alexander lets him know that she has some information about his investigation, then he turns straight back too it.

He explains that the reason he left her before is because ‘she went inside and he didn’t know what to do’. This shows that although he can be quite clever at times, autism still plays a major part in the chapter. He doesn’t know how to socialise with anyone so he simply walked away without saying goodbye because he doesn’t know the good meaning of manners or social equilibriums.

To conclude chapter 97 is to get Haddon out of a whole he had written himself into. He didn’t know where to go after...