DeFazio 1

Nicole DeFazio

Mr. Youngs

British Literature, Pd. 2

23 January 2014

The Curious Incident of the Dog at the Night-time by Mark Haddon

I pulled the fork out of the dog and lifted him into my arms and hugged him. He was leaking blood from the fork holes. I like dogs. You always know what a dog is thinking. It has four moods. Happy, sad, cross and concentrating. Also, dogs are faithful and they do not tell lies because they cannot talk. I had been hugging the dog for 4 minutes when I heard screaming. I looked up and saw Mrs. Shears running toward me from the patio. She was wearing pajamas and a housecoat. Her toenails were painted bright pink and she had no shoes on. She was shouting, “What in god’s name have you done to my dog?” I do not like people shouting at me. It makes me scared that they are going to hit me or touch me and I do not know what is going to happen. “Let go of the dog,” she shouted. “Let go of the dog for Christ’s sake.” I put the dog down on the lawn and moved back 2 meters. She bent down. I thought she was going to pick the dog up herself, but she didn’t. Perhaps she noticed how much blood there was and didn’t want to get dirty. Instead she started screaming again. I put my hands over my ears and closed my eyes and rolled forward till I was hunched up with my forehead pressed onto the grass. The grass was wet and cold. It was nice.

Haddon, Mark. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. New York, 2003: 3-4.

In the novel “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time”, the author, Mark

Haddon, tries to make the reader feel sorry for the 15 year old boy in the story named

Christopher. He does a good job in doing so for many reasons. The first being that Christopher gets accused of doing something that he never really did do by a neighbor across the street.

Second is that Christopher mentions how he does not like being cussed at in any way. He basically got cussed at for what he was being accused for. And third is that Haddon implies that

Christ is a caring, loving person who was just trying to help, but instead dug himself into his own DeFazio 2 ditch. All of these ideas that Haddon uses are to make the reader feel bad for the main character,

Christopher in this well-written novel.

The quote “What in god’s name have you done to my dog?” is actually really sad for many reasons. First, Christopher is being accused of stabbing the dog himself, which he would never do. He even said in the passage how he liked dogs because they are faithful. Second, Mrs.

Shears doesn’t understand that Christopher had just come over to help the dog to see if it was alright. He had no intentions of hurting the dog in any way, shape or form. And third,

Christopher is scared of Mrs. Shears. He has every right to be scared because she makes herself out to be crazy in this scene of the novel. He states “I do not like people shouting at me. It makes me scared that they are going to hit me or touch me and I do not know what is going to happen.”

This quote would make anyone reading this book extremely sad because Christopher is innocent and didn’t hurt the dog. By now, one would think that Mrs. Shears knows Christopher by now and should realize that he would never do anything to harm an animal. Instead, she is being very rude with her words and is blaming Chris for the stabbing of her dog. At this point, Chris is fed up with Mrs. Shears by now. Chris states “I put my hands over my ears and closed my eyes and rolled forward till I was hunched up with my forehead pressed onto the grass.” He takes his anger out in some weird, abnormal way, but he has every right to. Overall, Haddon makes the reader feel sorry for Christopher in this part of the novel because Chris is blamed for doing something he would never even think of doing.

In conclusion, Haddon made this part of the novel very sad and heartbreaking. He also wants to show that people who are innocent and caring are the ones who are the “bad people”. It does not matter if they are trying to help make the situation better or resolve it altogether; they are still the ones who are doing everything wrong. It just comes to show that not everyone is DeFazio 3 going to be nice and appreciate all that has been done for them. Chris went over to Mrs. Shears to help the dog, but instead, he got an earful for it. The lesson behind this passage is that a person should never accuse someone of doing something if they have no evidence to back up their accusations.