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Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature Kateřina Cenková The Asperger Narrative Bachelor’s Diploma Thesis Supervisor: doc. PhDr. Tomáš Pospíšil, Dr. 2012 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. …………………………………………… Kateřina Cenková I would like to thank doc. PhDr. Tomáš Pospíšil, Dr. for his support and advice. Table of Contents Introduction .................................................................................................................. 5 1. Asperger Syndrome .................................................................................................. 7 1. 1. Literature as Intervention ............................................................................... 10 2. The Genre Problem ................................................................................................ 12 2. 1. The Uses of Genre: Genre Functions ............................................................. 14 2. 2. Genre Functions and Asperger Narrative ....................................................... 15 3. Contemporary Fiction on Asperger ........................................................................ 18 3. 1. The Asperger Hero: Christopher Boone ........................................................ 21 3. 2. The Hero‘s Voice ........................................................................................... 23 3. 3. The Lost Heroine: Caitlin Smith .................................................................... 28 3. 4. The Unreliable Narrator ................................................................................. 29 3. 5. The Boy from the Tree House: Marcelo Sandoval ........................................ 34 3. 6. The Typical Hero ........................................................................................... 36 3. 7. Asperger in the Future: Lou Arrendale .......................................................... 42 3. 8. They Are Not Like Us .................................................................................... 44 3. 9. The Asperger Detective: Jacob Hunt ............................................................. 49 3. 10. The Asperger Mystery ................................................................................. 50 3. 11. The Mother‘s Only Boy: Seb Taylor ........................................................... 51 3. 12. Me and My Family ....................................................................................... 52 3. 13. The Asperger Narrative ................................................................................ 56 Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 58 Bibliography ............................................................................................................... 60 Summary .................................................................................................................... 64 Resumé ....................................................................................................................... 65 Introduction In 2003 Mark Haddon wrote a book about a 15-year-old boy, Christopher, who suffers from Asperger syndrome. Asperger syndrome (AS) is an autism spectrum disorder causing limited understanding of emotion and repetitive patterns of behaviour and interests (Woodbury-Smith and Volkmar 2). The Syndrome, however, unlike other autism spectrum disorders, does not affect cognitive or intellectual development (3). Haddon‘s book captured the audience with its fascinating hero and his voice. It won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award, the British Book Awards Literary Fiction Award and other prizes (―Mark Haddon‖), and became popular with both children and adults. Haddon‘s novella, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, is not the only AS-concerned narrative written in the English language. There are many other such examples of contemporary fiction. Authors such as Jodi Picoult, Kathryn Erskine or Kathy Hoopmann deal with the subject. Most of such stories are narrated by the peculiarly rational voice of the Asperger-suffering hero, which not only allows the readers a closer look into the hero‘s world, but also helps them learn more about themselves and the absurdity of the world surrounding us all. This work focuses on several examples of contemporary fiction concerning AS. The analysis and comparison of these examples in the course of this text concentrates primarily on the literary techniques used in the narrative construction of the hero, other narrative devices, specific language of the texts, their themes and their motives. The common features of the books identified by their analysis are used in this work to categorize these texts as ―Asperger narratives‖ – a new genre emerging from the contemporary interest in autism spectrum disorders and the need to reach understanding of them. 5 In the first chapter of this work the reader is briefly acquainted with the basic facts about the Asperger syndrome, its symptoms, the methods of its diagnosis, and the possibilities of intervention. The aim of the chapter is to provide the reader of this work with a simple background of medical information and further to point out the role of Asperger narrative in public discussion of AS, and the ways in which AS concerned literature may help reduce the effects of specific difficulties arising from the AS condition. The next part of the text deals with the study of genre, the definition of genre, its functions and the relevance of generic analysis in contemporary literary studies. Using the Asperger narrative as an example, the subsequent section enumerates the benefits of generic thinking for literary analysis. In further parts of this work the texts chosen as examples of Asperger narrative are analyzed in order to identify and enumerate their common features, which present a consistent set of criteria distinguishing Asperger narrative from broader generic categories, in accordance with contemporary approaches toward genre. The chapters should provide a brief introduction of individual texts marked as Asperger narratives, generic analysis of these texts and a comparison of its results. The identified points of connection between the texts are then used to describe Asperger narrative as a generic category. This work contributes to the wide discussion of the role of generic analysis in today‘s literary thinking; through close examination of selected AS concerned texts it establishes Asperger narrative as an independent genre, and likewise, it draws attention to the problem of Asperger syndrome and its representation in literary fiction. 6 1. Asperger Syndrome AS is a developmental disorder of social learning, communication and social interaction (Woodbury-Smith and Volkmar 2) causing language impairments and repetitive patterns of behavior (3). The syndrome was first observed in children and described by psychiatrist Leo Kanner from Baltimore in 1943 (Frith 672) and by Hans Asperger, an Austrian pediatrician working independently on Kanner, in 1944 (Woodbury-Smith and Volkmar 2). The term Asperger syndrome, however, had not been used and the disorder had not been widely discussed in the English-speaking countries until the publication of Lorna Wing‘s paper on the disorder in 1981 (Frith 673). Wing not only raised awareness of the AS in professional circles, but also proposed changes to the definition of AS and was the first author to link Asperger with autism (Woodbury-Smith and Volkmar 2). She suggested the existence of an ―autism spectrum‖ – a scale of autistic impairments varying in their effects on the patient‘s cognitive or social development (Frith 673). Though the relation between AS and autism remains a subject to doubt, the recent diagnostic criteria of AS and autism only differ in Asperger syndrome‘s ―apparently normal cognitive functioning and language development‖ (Woodbury-Smith and Volkmar 2, 3) – This means people with AS, unlike autistic people, should not have language-learning problems as little children. Both AS and autism are highly variable disorders (Frith 674), but as Fred Volkmar and Amy Klin notice in their comprehensive volume on AS: ―Although described the year after autism, the body of research on AS is much less advanced than on autism‖ (26). Among the symptoms of AS count difficulties in social interaction caused mainly by non-typical expression: though people with AS are usually very eloquent, their speech seems odd to others, as they tend to maintain the same high level of formality in their expression for every occasion (Woodbury-Smith and Volkmar 3). 7 They habitually use longer words of Latin origin rather than short words with multiple meanings to avoid ambiguity and may have problems misinterpreting implied meanings as literal (Attwood 67). People with Asperger mostly hate metaphors and phrasal verbs as they are unable to recognize their meanings off-hand and have to learn them in advance so as to make their communication style more natural and effective. The structuring of conversation presents a problem as well. People with AS often lead long and comprehensive monologues regardless of their listener‘s interest, they are unable to comply with the timing and rhythm of conversation, have problems interpreting the other speaker‘s message and formulating replies (Woodbury-Smith and Volkmar 3). Written communication

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