The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time

888 Words4 Pages
by Mark Haddon Christopher Boone’s (the main character and narrator of the book) interpretations of the non-autistic world in many instances throughout the book were often quite humorous despite the fact that he himself did not understand humor. Christopher’s very explanation of how he deconstructs a joke and can identify why it could be funny to someone else but not to himself is as evocative as many of his other observations. The humor joke about the accountant, the logistician and the mathematician was particularly lost with me. I just didn’t get it. As I read the book I found myself questioning my understanding of some of the very things he questioned, such as metaphors, white lies and rhetorical questions. In the matter of metaphors, he suggested that they should be considered lies because they were not true at all. Christopher himself said, “The word "metaphor" means carrying something from one place to another and it is when you describe something by using a word for something that it isn't. This means that the word "metaphor" is a metaphor. He also mentioned a list of metaphors such as “people do not have skeletons in their cupboards”. I found these observations particularly humorous because for the life of me I can’t remember when I was ever taught what metaphor are but I can somehow understand them. I found myself thinking that I look at metaphors in the same way as parables in a bible, they make complicated things make sense! In a way Christopher makes us question the need for such a thing when we can just be direct when the metaphor can be confusing if you don’t understand it. Knowing that humor was lost on him and metaphor seem unnecessary I was surprised that he was accepting of the concept of white lies. I actually have always thought of white lies as simply lies, never having any truth to them, but he saw them as an opportunity to tell
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