FAR MORE IMPORTANT than the literary awards it has won, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time's ability to rock our conception of what is normal or dysfunctional, clear-headed or soft-hearted, significant or insignificant, symbolic or real, speaks powerfully to our “PC” culture. Christopher Boone, Mark Haddon's protagonist, is a benevolent monstrosity. This sounds negative but Chris has just the right blend of what philosopher of horror literature, Noel Carroll, calls ontic ambiguity. Like Frankenstein's monster before him, Christopher lacks a tell-tale human quality – genuine emotional empathy. His limitations, even his inability to understand nuanced feelings and utilize metaphor, draw out these very qualities in his readers. He makes us laugh and cry, but unlike he, in all the right places. We laugh at what he misunderstands; we cry at what he understands and we project on him what neither of us fully possess, humane humanity.
One of the basic agreements between authors and readers is to suspend disbelief when they enter the world of the novel. Ironically, this is something that Christopher Boone, the alleged writer of the curious incident, could never achieve. His inability is what makes the tension between plot and characters so incredibly believable. The plot consists of Christopher's rather circuitous ambling around the mystery of who killed Wellington the dog. He finds himself enmeshed in the crime when he discovers Wellington the poodle with a garden fork imbedded in his flesh. Christopher, the inimical outsider, becomes prime suspect due to his quirky responses to the investigator's questions.
While Christopher registers a degree of grief over the unfortunate hound, what really picks his attention is the coincidental parallels between this real life event and Sherlock Holmes' The Hound of the Baskervilles. This enigma sets Chris' hyper-logical mind into full throttle; he can no more give up on the conundrum than he can thwart his obsessions over mathematical equations. In this particular curious incident no amount of induction or straight-headed reasoning can solve the puzzle. What is needed, and what is beyond Christopher's ability to comprehend, is motive. Human motives tear Christopher's life apart and break readers' heart in the process. Christopher, lacking what most of us have, is more than most of us are, a vulnerable human being content with adequate solutions to mystery.
What makes the character of Christopher so believable is that even those of us adept at interpreting symbols and emotions find in him a mirror image. His actions mirror the rituals and superstitions we all use to avert disaster. His over reliance on rationality and cause and effect logic mirror our similar attempts to erase mystery in our lives. Our deepest link to Christopher is right there in the title: we are curious. We do not have to go very far out of our perceptual orbit to find a lifetime worth of wonder. ”People go on holidays to see things... but I think that there are so many things just in one house that it would take years to think about all of them properly.” Christopher may not know this, but he has touched an archetypal metaphor.