Curious Incident

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Mark Haddon

inspired from Cahier d'Accompagnement Nathan

Audrey RAFFIN - Lycée Gaston Bachelard

Mark HADDON

Characters

-2-

-3-

-23-

-29-

Christopher

-43-

-79-

Christopher and his father

Christopher 's dream

-83-

-107-

The Hound of the Baskervilles

-149-

About Christopher's mother

-167-

The revelation

-191-

-227-

The runaway

-233-2

-227-

-233-1

Reunions

After reading

Around the book

Mark HADDON

Characters

-29-

-2-

-3-

-23-

Christopher

-43-

-79-

Christopher and his father

-83-

Christopher 's dream

-107-

The Hound of the Baskervilles

About Christopher's mother

-149-

-167-

The revelation

-191-

-227-

The runaway

-233-2

-233-1

-227-

Reunions

After reading

Around the book

Learn more about Autism HERE!

Christopher

Asperger Syndrom

chapter 3

Plot

Emotions

MARK HADDON

Prizes

Main topics

Information about his life

Children's fiction

Adult fiction

Poetry

Screenplays

Mark HADDON

CHRISTOPHER

Father

Mother

teacher

pet 1

pet 2

WELLINGTON

Characters

Language

Christopher

Draw

chapter 2

Plot

Whodunnits

Plot

Christopher

chapter 23

Verisimilitude

Christopher's family tree

Christopher BOONE

Digressions

Christopher

chapter 29

Metaphors

Plot

Christopher and his father

chapter 43

Discrepancy

Language

Plot

Christopher and his father

Language

chapter 79

Plot

Foreshadowing

Christopher's dream

chapter 83

Plot

Gattaca

The Hound of the Baskervilles

chapter 107

Plot

Mise en abyme

About Christopher's mother

chapter 149

Language

Plot

The plot twist

The revelation

Plot

chapter 167

Monologue VS Soliloquy

Peripeteia VS Anagnorisis

The runaway

Verissimilitude

chapter 191 (p. 184-185)

Plot

The runaway

Plot

chapter 227 (p.223)

Coming-of-age stories

Language

Reunions

chapter 227 (p.233-234)

Plot

Humour

Reunions

Conflicts and reconciliation

chapter 233 (p.265-266)

Language

Plot

Reunions

chapter 233 (p.267)

Language

Plot

Christopher's story follows a traditional pattern:

- Scene of exposition - Incident - Rising action - Crisis - Climax - Denouement - Epilogue / end

After reading

Title

Genre

Narrative stages

First person narrative

Voice and language

The title, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, is taken from a Sherlock Holmes story called ‘Silver Blaze’. In this story, a valuable race-horse has been stolen from its stable. The police suspect either a band of gypsies who were camping nearby, or a stranger who visited the stable the day before. Sherlock Holmes disagrees with the police inspector who asks:

"Is there any other point to which you would draw my attention?" "To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time." "The dog did nothing in the night-time." "That was the curious incident," remarked Sherlock Holmes.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time is what is known in the publishing industry as a ‘crossover book’. This means that the publishers decided it would appeal to both children and adults – in this case to teenagers and adults. The book was produced in two different editions, with different covers, one of which was marketed for teenagers and one for adults. (the Harry Potter books were also marketed in this way, as was Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights trilogy.)

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time is a first-person narrative.Some of the advantages of writing from the first person point of view are: - the reader feels more sympathy with the character who is telling the story - a first person narrator can make the story seem more realistic. The main disadvantages of writing in the first person are: - the narrator can only tell the reader about what he/she is aware of or has experienced, so we only get a limited (and sometimes misleading) vision of an event. - the reader really only gets to know the narrator, who sometimes is unreliable.

A ‘Voice’ in a novel or a poem means the way a writer, or a character created by the writer, expresses themselves. This can include the language they use, the attitudes they have and the ‘tone’ (for example sarcastic or sad). The voice in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is Christopher’s voice, but of course he is not a real person. So how does Mark Haddon make us believe in Christopher’s voice? In an interview, Mark Haddon said: "This ‘toneless voice’ is typical of someone with Asperger Syndrome. In real life this means that the voice of someone with Asperger Syndrome can sound monotonous– in other words their feelings are not expressed in their voice."

Around the book

From book to stage

From book to film

About autism

Non verbal autism

Autism on TV

The Curious Incident - trailer of the play

still from the play by Simon Stephen's theater adaptation

Adapting The Curious Incident

About the play

Kia Chatterjee is a special girl with special needs. She has just hit her teens ; she has an incredibly sharp mind and a photographic memory. Her favourite pastimes are rattling off prime and Fibonacci numbers to herself, counting red cars on the streets and writing her diary. Kia lives with her mother; her father has succumbed to cardiac problems. Although it may seem that she is incapable of feeling grief, she is devastated by her father's untimely departure. When her pet cat Cosmos dies, Kia's sixth sense tells her that the poor animal's death was anything but natural, and that it was murdered. She vows to find the culprit end embarks upon a journey that will lead her to a shoking truth. Bhaskar Chattopadhyay, Firstpost.com, 2019

Kia and Cosmos - Trailer

A Boy Called Po (2016) - directed by John Asher

Kia and Cosmos is a Bengali film freely adapted from The Curious Incident. It was directed by Sudipto Roy in 2018. It is set in Kolkata, India.

Many depictions of autism concentrate on "high-functioning' individuals. People with non-verbal forms of autism are much less visible or audible. Naoki Higashida published a memoir, The Reason I jump: the Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism, after his mother helped him communicate by pointing at characters on an alphabet board. The book was translated into English by novelist David Mitchell and his Japanese wife Ka Yoshida, because they had been very moved by it. They felt it gave them insight into their non-verbal autistic son's mind.

Carly's café experience

"The problem is, many children with autism don't have the means to express themselves, and often even their own parents don't have a clue what they might be thinking. So my big hope is that I can help a bit by explaining, in my own way, what's going on in the minds of people with autism. I also hope that, by reading this book, you might become a better friend of someone with autism." The Reason I Jump (2007), Naoki Higashida

Atypical is a comedy series that centres on Sam, a 19-year-old US high-school student with autism who longs to date girsl, just like his classmates.

The Good Doctor is a hospital drama series whose central character, student doctor Shaun Murphy, is on the autism spectrum but also has savant syndrome, which means he has a perfect visual memory of medical diagrams and the working of the human body.