The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
Setting:
“The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time” takes place in the year 1998 in and around the town of Swindon in England. It’s a typical small-town neighborhood, where everybody knows everybody. The main character lives in a medium size house with a nice garden. His school has a nice environment, and from the description it seems that Christopher likes it – especially his teacher Siobhan whom he talks too very well. Financially, it seems that the family is middleclass, they don’t to have too much or too little money. Their main form of income is Christopher’s father heating maintenance and boiler repair business. Even though Christopher is a difficult child, his parents still show him plenty of love and affection. This love helps him through the whole story – it gives him a kind confidence that he lacks.
Plot:
The beginning: The novel is about a fifteen year old autistic boy named Christopher, who lives with his dad in a small town in England. One day Christopher finds his neighbor’s dog dead, it has been killed with a fork. After the shock of finding the dog, Christopher decides to uncover the dog’s murderer. While investigating, Christopher gets arrested and taken in to custody by the police because of a misunderstanding. After this episode, he promises the police and his father that he would stop his investigation immediately.
Conflict: As a part of a school assignment, Christopher writes his investigation in a book, and this turns out to be the book we are reading. Ignoring repeated warnings from his father, Christopher investigates the crime scene and has interviews with the residents of his block. Based on these interviews, he figures out that his neighbor (the owner of the dog) has had a romantic affair. Christopher goes searching for the book, which his father has hidden from him in order to get further answers; he ends up finding it in his father’s bedroom. In the book Christopher finds and a bunch of letters addressed to himself. When he looks closer he can see that they are from his long lost mother. His father now decides to tell Christopher the truth about his mother; that she lives in London with his neighbor’s ex-husband. Christopher was very disappointed that his father had not told him the truth earlier. Christopher decides to travel to London to find his mother.
Climax: Christopher’s autusim made the journey to London quite stressful, but finally, he reaches and is reunited with his mother.

Conclusion: Christopher moves in with Mother, successfully completes his A-level test in math, and begins to reestablish trust with Father. He recalls all that he has accomplished over the course of the novel and sets out a series of goals for the future.

Characterization:
The main character of the novel name is Christopher Boone and he is fifteen years old. He is both the main character as well as the narrator. He suffers from autism, which has made him mathematically gifted, but socially challenged. His love for math stems from his living way of living; everything has to be in order before his brain can function optimally. An example from the book is that “all math has a solution, people don’t”. His dream is to one day become an astronaut and fly to outer space. His favorite activity is playing computer games, which he spends plenty of time doing. He doesn’t like any form of human contact. If a person whom he doesn’t know touches him, he will scream or even hit them as happened with the policeman. Another thing he doesn’t like is loud noises, they confuse him and when he hears one he’ll cover his ears to block out the noise.
Themes:
There are very many themes in the novel. On one side it’s an informative book for people that have autistic children. The book goes into detail of a lot of the processes one has to go through when dealing with an autistic child. On the other side, it’s a story about a boy who wants to become independent. Even though Christopher is a “special” boy, he wants to find his place in society like everyone else. This is a problem, I think a lot of teenagers worldwide have to deal with. It’s a long process to figure out where you belong, and because of Christopher’s condition this process is prolonged and more difficult.
Genre:
Mystery novel
Family drama
Children’s book