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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime Essay

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In the Novel, The Curious Incident of The Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon, we are shown that the truth is not always accurate and that lies are sometimes necessary. Christopher Boone is a 15 year old who has Asperger’s Syndrome, which lies in the Autism Spectrum. Due to this condition Christopher does not understand emotion, metaphors – which he considers a lie – and knows all the prime numbers up to 7,507 as well as all the countries and cities of the world. Christopher’s life revolves around the truth and throughout the novel he is seen to grow and learn to cope with different things when dealing with lies. Most events in this novel are situated around a lie that has been told; nearly every character tells one and has to face the …show more content…

Judy left with Mr. Shears and this caused trouble to Ed, with not knowing what to do, he lied to Christopher. Christopher was lead to believe that his mother had a fatal heart attack and had died later in hospital. Ed was faced with a major decision to make and at the time lying was the only option furthermore seeing the idea that lying was necessary in that case. Christopher would have struggled to understand the concept of his mother leaving with Mr. Shears due to his condition. Later in the novel, Christopher discovers letters that his mother has sent him since she has been gone. Here we see the effect that a lie has on him; he began to feel sick and dizzy. Christopher curled up into a ball and started to have a bad stomach ache, the next thing he says he remembers was waking up and discovering that he had been sick all over him self. Christopher learns a lot from this lie. He goes on an adventure to find his mother as he is scared of his dad; this is because of the lie by omission Ed told. Ed killed Wellington and never admitted it. ‘I couldn’t trust him, even though he had said “Trust me,” because he had told a lie about a big thing’.
Christopher took the tube in London and managed to find his way to his mother. Without Ed’s lie, Christopher would have never been able to learn as much as he did.

The notion of truth or its reverse, untruth, dishonesty and lies is the main concern of Mark Haddon’s novel The Curious

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