“Christopher’s story is a tale of self-preservation, especially to the exclusion of everybody else.” Support your ideas by
close reference to the novel.
Candidates have the following pool of textual resources to draw from when attempting this essay question:
• Internationally or otherwise, Christopher makes a proclamation through his book, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time to tell us as much as he can possibly do so, about himself and what he stands for, vis-à-vis, ordinary people.
• Christopher cannot and does not associate himself with others comfortably.
• Although more comfortable with adults than his peers, he treats both categories with detachment.
• He understands his parents based on what he thinks they can do for him.
• He does not feel for any one of them.
• His relationship with them are highly demarcated by his familiarity and his level of comfort in terms of whether he can or cannot truse t them.
• In general, Christopher keeps an arm’s length from strangers, neighbours, peers and crowds.
• In general, he takes a longer time to deal with new people he meets, new situations or new events which come at him.
• Extent of his detachedness/detachment from people –
[a] he consistently informs his readers of his desire to be left alone
[b] he claims he cannot understand human feelings and intuition and undermines the importance of emotional feelings
[c] he single-mindedly promotes logical thinking and reasoning as the only way to deal with life
[d] he thinks highly of his ability to make full use of his mental capacity to deal with life problems / overlooking his tendency to suffer information overload and having to rely on coping mechanisms to cope within the world of normal people.
[e] he cannot understand subtle facial expressions and changes in temperament / cannot cope with mood swings of ordinary people
[f] he cannot reciprocate his parents’ love
[g] he does not lie
[h] he does not chat
[g] he does not do eye-contact
[h] he does not do social networking
• Extent of his fear of humankind –
[a] he talks about the annihilation of human kind
[b] he talks about the proliferation of his own kind so that there is no more need for chatting, communication and eye contact
[c] he talks about exploration in the universe / outbreak of virulent virus which kills off the normal human beings, leaving his own kind alone unmolested
• Extent of his desire for orderliness to iron out creases in our chaotic world
[a] coping mechanisms
[b] getting things done his way
[c] zero-tolerance for things not done his way
[d] conditional relationship with his parents
• Alone-less when comtemplating his future and ambition
[a] his favourite ambition – an astronaut who does not need to communicate or work with his team
[b] his favourite hideaway – a prison cell / a submersible in the undersea world whereby he can be all alone / in outerspace
[c] his future – to secure good academic qualifications / to secure woman companionship so that the woman may look after him / be a scientist
[d] his future / his plans / his dreams – does not include his parents or other significant adults.
[e] his need for timetable / structures / orderliness / takes precedence above all else.
[f] Christopher does not care about the readers’ interest in wanting to know how he and his father’s relationship may heal at the end of the novel. But he certainly makes a loud proclamation of his personal future to all who cares to know it. In his future, I repeat, he makes no provision for his relationship with other people, noticeably missing, that with his father and mother.
QUESTION 1b
Haddon tells the story from Christopher’s point of view. Show what effect this has from any two incidents in the novel with regards to parent-child interaction.
Candidates must be careful when interpreting the question. He / she must understand that:
1. This is a writer’s craft question – specifically, how the skill of the writer effectively produces the effect the writer sets out to achieve.
2. What effect this way of telling a story has on the reader with regards to parent-child interaction.
Candidates who choose this question will have to be really selective in their choices of any two incidents which involve Christopher and his father and/or mother. Some possible situations are:
[A] Christopher and his father, Ed Boone
• Ed Boone’s lying about Judy’s hospitalization and eventual death
• Ed Boone’s bailing Christopher out of remand prison
• Ed Boone’s struggle to talk Christopher out of investigating into the murder of Wellington
• Ed Boone’s securing of a promise by Christopher to stop writing down notes on his investigation
• Ed Boone’s confession to Christopher of his lies about Judy, Wellington and so on.
• Ed Boone’s frenetic attempts to look for Christopher when he escapes from Swindon.
• Ed Boone’s confrontation with Judy at London Chapter Road flat
• Ed Boone’s desperate attempts to win back Christopher’s trust
[B] Christopher and his mother, Judy Boone
• Mother and son - Reunion at Chapter Road, London
• Christopher’s tantrums at London departmental store
• Christopher’s demand to return to Swindon to take A level Mathematics exam
Possible effects:
[a] Christopher is the voice behind the book as Haddon intends. Being an autistic individual, his perception of things, people and events around him is limited by his ability and maturity to understand and appreciate why things and events happen as they do. From Christopher, we cannot fully understand the extent of the love, care and concern extended by both his parents to him. As care-givers of an autistic child, both have struggled with Christopher and with themselves.
[b] Episodes which are inherently emotional come across as being bland and toned-down. Incidents which portray key turning points in the story become downplayed. The narrative is emotionally restrained by Christopher’s interpretation. We are supposed to believe Christopher because he claims that he does not lie and he cannot lie. But the emotional quality of parent-child interaction is lost because Christopher cannot understand the emotions played out by either Ed or Judy Boone.
[c] Despite the constant appearance of Ed Boone in Christopher’s narrative, we are left very much to our own imagination to read into his character. Fortunately, we are able to glean that he is on the whole, a faithful husband, responsible and loving father and care-giver. We also gather that he is sometimes too quick to get angry and is rather loose in using swear words and so on. The humanness of Ed Boone is being downplayed by Christopher’s narrative. We shall never be able to know how the husband and the father in Ed Boone cope with the marital woes when Judy leaves him and he is left alone to manage Christopher in Swindon. We shall never be able to probe deeper into his feelings for Christopher except that in his confession, he informs Christopher that “it is very hard for him to keep telling the truth all the time”. Ed Boone after all belongs to the harsh world that we all live in. Christopher cannot understand his father’s anger, his killing of Wellington, his lie about Judy Boone’s desertion and his love for him.
[d] As for Judy, we are blessed by the revelations in five of her forty-three letters to Christopher. Otherwise Judy remains very much as a prop. Christopher needs her in his most desperate moment in his life: he needs her so that he can secure a place to live, now that Ed Boone is deemed a liar and a dangerous person to him. His relationship with Judy does not change much even after the reunion in London: Christopher throws his usual demands and tantrums and Judy puts up with him and cleans up any mess he leaves behind and tolerates all his antics.
[e] Ed and Judy Boone are struggling care-givers of an autistic child. Their interactions with Christopher should have been more interesting and layered but because of the logical way in which Christopher delivers his narrative, we cannot appreciate the efforts they put in to raise their son more than we could have. Their different approaches to parenting Christopher lead to the eventual departure of Judy Boone: this aspect is being downplayed by Christopher’s inability to understand what has actually gone wrong between his father and mother. Also because of Christopher’s autism, he cannot possibly have guessed that he is one of the contributing factors leading to unhappiness and eventual separation between his father and mother. As readers, we end up reading about specifically superficial issues transpiring between father and son and / or mother and son.
[f] We are also constantly reminded by the fact that the parent-child interactions are the way they are because Christopher is quite unlike a normal teenager in some aspects. The fact that emotional exchanges cannot be presented in its entirety satisfactorily is also very much caused by the limitations Christopher faces in managing interpersonal communication. He cannot infer facial expressions and is uncomfortable with eye-contact.
Question 1C(i) How does Haddon make you feel sympathetic towards Christopher’s father in this passage and elsewhere in the novel?
POINTS TO BE INCLUDED:
[A] BASED ON THE GIVEN TEXT
• Christoper sees Ed Boone as a liar and a dangerous person.
• He does not consider Ed’s love and concern for him.
• He seems to have forgotten about all that Ed has done for him previously.
• His intransigence/inflexibility reduces Ed Boone’s position to that of a stranger – except that he is a stranger who offers himself up for an opportunity to seek redemption / forgiveness from Christopher.
• Ed Boone puts himself through the ordeal and has to deal with how to win back Christopher’s heart all by himself. He does not have the entire support of his wife who has her own issues to deal with.
• Ed Boone cannot possibly explain his past actions in terms whereby he can even hope that Christopher would appreciate or understand.
[B] AND ELSEWHERE IN THE NOVEL
- Ed Boone's lies
- Ed Boone's crimes
- Ed Boone's commitment to Christopher
- Ed Boone's loss of his wife's fancy
- Ed Boone's confession
- Ed Boone's struggles to rebuild his relationship with his son
Haddon conjures a moving scene here when he reduces Ed Boone, who is full of contrition, to pleading with Christopher, who does not want to deal with his father. Haddon shows us how Ed Boone genuinely loves Christopher with his persistence in seeking his son’s attention. He yearns for his son’s attention, even if it is only a miserly “five minutes”. In this instant, we have the desperate father eager to mend his damaged relationship with his son, who thinks that his father is a bad and dangerous man and so he does not want to be anywhere near him.
Ed Boone’s act of using a timer to reassure Christopher that he will not overstay his welcome is both a sign of his fatherly love and consideration for his son. Through this, Haddon has also skilfully illustrated to us, just how much Ed Boone, as a care giver, is aware of Christopher’s autistic ways and idiosyncrasies. Haddon shows us how unmoved and fixated Christopher can be if he firmly believes that Ed Boone is a liar and a dangerous man. Here he writes about Christopher’s intransigence and how of all people, the man who cares the most for him, his father, Ed Boone, has to take the most cruel brunt of it. We are made to feel for Ed Boone because Christopher’s rejection seems to be a result of mental block on his part. It makes us wonder how he has conveniently forgotten how much his father has done for him prior to his revelation of his “crimes”. Haddon’s writing makes us consider how cruel Christopher’s comments and subsequent actions can be to Ed Boone although we also know that Christopher’s stubbornness stems chiefly from his autism. But still the son has come across as being rather hard on his father and thus Ed Boone has to deal with Christopher’s initial refusal to have anything to do with him, including this conversation in this extract.
Haddon has been plainly consistent in informing us that Ed Boone, despite his shortcomings and “crimes” is genuinely sorry for what he has done in the name of protecting his son. He is ever conscious of the wrongs he has done to Christopher and understands why his son is resisting him. He is desperate to repair the deep dent in his relationship with his son but he has not given up trying ever since the fateful day Christopher runs away from home after Ed’s confession for killing Wellington, Mrs. Shear’s large poodle with curly black hair. No matter what, he does not allow his desperation to hinder him from trying to win Christopher’s attention.
Haddon writes through Christopher who claims that he "does not tell or write lies" because he is incapable of lies or dealing with other people’s lies. So if we trust what Christopher has reported here about what Ed Boone is telling him, we cannot help but feel sorry for the father because, it is one of the most vulnerable moments for the father when he informs his son that he “does not care how long” it is going to take for Christopher “to learn to trust him” again because this bond – the trust between the father and his son to Ed Boone, is “more important than anything else”. Haddon has unreservedly reveal to us, through Christopher’s reportage just how earnest and sincere Ed Boone is in his desperate bid to win back his son.
Haddon continues to build on Ed Boone’s resolve as we read of his persistence to reestablish interactions with his son. Ed’s attempt to persuade his son to accept his invitation to learn to trust him again as “a difficult project” which they “have to do together” so that they can “spend more time” together. Haddon shows us the extent of Ed Boone’s resolve and the sensitivity he exhibits when communicating with his son by speaking in a manner in which Christopher can begin to understand. No matter how one-sided his intention might be, the father in Ed Boone nevertheless promises his son that if they succeed in carrying out the project, their relationship “will get better”. In contrast to Christopher’s amplification of distrust and fear, Haddon’s characterization of Ed Boone holds out a ray of hope, no matter how uncertain the eventual outcome may be. We can certainly understand this as another manifestation of fatherly love. Haddon also shows us how the father is being ever so considerate to his skeptical son when he reassures his son not to rush into agreeing to participate in the “difficult” project of healing. He asks his son to “think” about his proposal before coming to any decision.
As an appropriate wrapping up of the very short meeting, Haddon presents Ed Boone with a chance to offer Christopher a surprise gift in the form of a golden retriever puppy as a token of his apology to his son. After all that is said and done, Haddon reaffirms our sympathy towards Ed Boone when he says with a tone of finality to his son that he “would never, ever do anything to hurt him”.
We read about Ed Boone through the narrative voice of Christopher. However, owing to his autism, Christopher, regardless of how much he claims to be proud of his novel, is unable to describe his interactions with other people in terms of the mutual exchanges of thoughts and feelings as effectively as he could and should have done. So we can only imagine the prolonged lonely struggles and continual conflicting feelings and thoughts that Ed Boone has to take on because he simply has practically nobody to turn when he needs emotional support for himself. In Ed Boone, Haddon has skilfully created a flawed character who is believably human. Ed Boone is on the surface, a modern day stoical family man who can think independently, feel sensitively and get angry when he crosses his own threshold for patience.
In addition Haddon saddles Ed Boone with the challenge of having to manage his life all alone with a teenager son afflicted with autism, without the help of his wife, who has run away with another man. Haddon makes him deal with a depressive wife who falls out of love with Ed Boone and an autistic teenager son who takes and takes from him and rarely gives back anything in return, despite the fact that it is not exactly the young man’s fault since he is afflicted with autism. Ed Boone is literally, a giver – he is the man of the house, the provider to his family, the caregiver to Christopher and figuratively, the husband who “gives away” his wife to another man.
Both Christopher and Judy Boone have issues of their own. Christopher is only comfortable with Ed Boone because in his own words, his father is always there for him; does the daily chores for him and never lies to him. Judy Boone is depressive and is greatly drained by the daily toil of having to look after Christopher. Each time when Ed Boone arrives at the scene, Judy Boone relinquishes her care-giver role to him almost too quickly and willingly. It is also indeed true, as Christopher “never tells lies”, that Ed Boone is always there for him when he is bailing him out of the prison remand cell, keeping him company after work at home, visiting Twycross Zoo and patiently trying to talk him out of investigating the murder of Wellington any further. We feel for Ed Boone because Haddon has created a genuinely loving and caring father. Not only that, Ed Boone has been consistently and unconditionally devoted to the welfare of his son. To the very end, Ed Boone is the one who proactively tries to mend the damage in his relationship with his son.
Haddon deals Ed Boone a huge blow when he discovers that his wife, Judy Boone is seeing their neighbour, Roger Shears, and has become intimate with him. Haddon isolates Ed Boone further so that he struggles alone in this emotional turmoil. Ed Boone does not have anybody else to turn to for advice concerning the affairs of the heart and he cannot absolve himself entirely from blame with regard to his estrangement with Judy Boone. This is because Haddon hints of communication problems which have existed between the couple when they are dealing with Christopher’s “behavioural problems”. Eventually, it is his clumsiness which causes him to lose his hold on his wife. Haddon’s realistic portrayal of a beleaguered husband in Ed Boone makes us feel sorry, not angry, with him. Ed Boone is an imperfect character but at least, he is human and as humans, we all make mistakes. I am sure I can live with that.
Haddon makes Ed Boone truly the only family member in the story who is capable of managing Christopher and helping him keep some of his idiosyncrasies in check. Haddon places Ed Boone on a very thin line when the secret- and guilt-ridden father has to keep at telling the “truth” to his son, who cannot live with lies or the telling of lies. The most interesting thing on the part of the readers is that, it has taken us quite a while to realize and understand why the frazzled father is uncharacteristically insistent that Christopher should promise to end all investigations concerning the murder of Mrs. Shears large black poodle, Wellington so that he will not continue to bother Mrs. Shears and the other neighbours on Randolph Street.
Haddon also shows us in no uncertain terms, that Ed Boone is a responsible father to Christopher. First and foremost, Ed Boone’s patience and perseverance help him to succeed with managing Christopher’s acting up and other “behavioural problems”. Ed Boone is patient not only with Christopher but also with Judy Boone who is unable to cope with Christopher’s demands and becomes increasingly depressive. Secondly, Ed Boone has to live with his lies when he faces Christopher every waking moment of his time. We can only feel how much he is hurt by his own silence on the subjects of his “murder of Wellington”, Christopher’s insistence on continuing his investigations, the clumsily fabricated story of “death” of Judy Boone to cover up her running away to live with Roger Shears in London. When Ed Boone finally breaks down and confesses his “crimes” to his son, he is forced to face up to a Christopher who unreservedly decides that his father is now “a liar and a dangerous person”. The fact that Haddon has Christopher writing Ed Boone off so easily when his father has ironically revealed the “truth” to him makes us feel even sorrier for Haddon. Everything he has done in the name of love and protection for his son has been in vain after all.
Despite and because of his flaws and the mistakes he has committed which Ed Boone feels Christopher will never be able to understand, Haddon makes me feel sympathetic towards Ed Boone because he burdens a faithful husband and a reliable and patient care-giver father with lies of his very own creation in the name of loving and protecting his son, Christopher from harm. The fact that Haddon is writing through the autistic, and therefore, (applicable in his particular case), self-indulgent Christopher, makes it all the more poignant for Ed Boone, because Christopher’s narration does not even hint of the father’s feeling of guilt, feeling of emotional loss and his need for somebody’s shoulder to cry on when he needs to relieve his emotional stress. Another cruel blow which Haddon deals on Ed Boone is that, when he is on the rebound, Mrs. Shears' gestures of intimacy serves both to soothe him at first and then later on to turn against him to cause grievous hurt to Ed Boone. Christopher only learns that his father is the real "murderer" of Wellington, in his autistic world of logical thinking and reasoning, he is unlikely to understand why and what leads his father to commit the hideous and cowardly crime against an animal. Christopher's inability to comprehend and forgive his father further isolates Ed Boone but, ironically, endears him to the readers. We can appreciate how the poor father and the man that he is, is overwhelmed by a barrage of problems which he alone cannot easily manage or resolve.
We will never be able to get a hold on how Ed Boone sees himself in the whole scheme of things because it is Christopher’s story which forms the focus of the novel, although he is a significant supporting character. However, this shortcoming on the part of the son’s narration does not reduce the impact Ed Boone’s role plays out in the story. Haddon deliberately allows Ed Boone to suffer all alone in silence and Christopher’s self-indulgent narrative style either partially or totally blocks out Ed Boone’s inner emotional struggles until much later in the novel, especially after Christopher has accidentally discovered and read five of the 43 letters from his mother, Judy Boone, found in Ed Boone’s shirt box in his room. All in all, Haddon has successfully made us feel sympathetic towards Ed Boone because of all the above arguments I have presented.
Question 1C(ii) What is the significance of Ed Boone’s declaration, “I would never, ever do anything to hurt you”? What effect does this have on Christopher? Support your answer by close reference to the rest of the novel.
• Significance fo Ed Boone’s declaration - He is tortured by his own guilty conscience and is sincere and repentant. He has never intended harm to befall his son. More than ever after the expose of his lies, he realizes that the delay in revealing the truth can only cause Christopher and him more pain than everything else. So he really means what he says when he tells Christopher that he would never, ever do anything to hurt him. His declaration is the pledge of his unconditional love for his son.
• Ed Boone’s declaration probably has little or no effect on Christopher. Even if Christopher is able to contextualize what his father means by saying so, it may conjure negative images for Christopher because he thinks that Ed is a liar and is dangerous.
• Christopher cannot fully understand and appreciate his father’s ordeal. The minute he learns from Ed Boone the truth about Wellington’s death and the case of Judy Boone and Eileen Shears, he begins to see his father as a liar and a dangerous man.
• He cannot understand his father’s promise and his father’s past actions –
[a] lying about Judy Boone’s hospitalization and death
[b] lying about he and Judy’s marital woes
[c] shutting Christopher out of his personal problems with Judy Boone, Eileen and Roger Shears
[d] hiding Judy’s letters from Christopher
[e] attempting to stop Christopher from investigating into Wellington’s murder mystery
[f] struggling to put up a straight face when dealing with his son.
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