“And That Means I Can Do Anything” Cathartic Realism in the end of the curious incident of the dog in the night-time

Have you read the curious incident of the dog in the night-time?  Great, read this analysis of the ending.

Critical Analysis with **SPOILERS OF ENDING****

http://www.amazon.com/The-Curious-Incident-Dog-Night-Time/dp/1400032717

“And That Means I Can Do Anything”

Cathartic Realism in the end of the curious incident of the dog in the night-time

 

The autistic juvenile narrator of the curious incident of the dog in the night-time (hereafter the dog), Christopher Boone, can be analyzed as a tragic hero who completes a quest.  The novel ends with the haunting claim by Christopher that he will achieve his dreams and be exactly what he envisions himself to become, a scientist.  Christopher lacks a full sense of self-awareness.  He believes his dreams will succeed because he completed his ‘quest’.  Christopher believes he showed success and capability in going to London on his own, solving the mystery of who killed Wellington, found his mother, was brave, and wrote a book.  Due to his self-perceived success, Christopher concludes ‘that means I can do anything.’

The ending of this story is intentionally meant to give the reader pause.  Christopher himself, being not fully aware of emotions, cannot experience full catharsis as a tragic hero.  However, the artistic genius of the dog is the author’s ability to let the narrator present a voice to the reader which does not make conclusions or tell the reader what to think, thus leaving the reader to analyze the narrator internally.  The reader must contrast Christopher’s optimistic self-assessment to realism. 

Christopher cannot do anything and everything he could envision.  His trip to London was not a success.  Police were looking for him, and at any moment he anxiously gripped a knife handle, unable to serenely handle the human atmosphere around him.  In solving who killed Wellington, he isolated his father as a liar and refused to grow past that one fault to allow a successful relationship.  Christopher found his mother, ruined her current relationship, and forced her back into a life style she purposefully escaped.  He was brave, in a sense, but was incapable of enduring the stress of high human interaction in the subway.  He views his quest as a success and a sign of growth, but to an astute reader, his quest is seen as a series of near tragedies and life altering chaos for his parents.  In Christopher’s self-acclaimed success and claim that he can do anything, the reader should see the subtle, but climatic emphasis of the author’s purpose in writing the text: humans are not capable of anything and everything, including those with disability; thus, to show true empathy and emotional connection, we need to acknowledge the difficulty in living with limits on our potential.

 As the sister of a severely handicapped brother, I empathize with Christopher’s family.  My brother Dustin, although a beautiful blessing, had mytonic dystrophy and could not accurately claim he could do anything he wanted, in part because he was not physically or mentally capable of speech.  My parents, like Christopher’s, put commendable amounts of effort and energy into caring for my brother.  Along with that energy, came occasional stress and frustration.  The catharsis at the end of the dog is not about Christopher’s personal growth; in fact, he changes very little in course of the novel.  However, the catharsis rests in the reader, who experiences an emotional cleansing of realism, acknowledging that not everything is possible for everyone and moving forward from that realization to accept that it is neither fair nor correct to expect everyone to be the same, to be capable of all their dreams, or expect that living with limits is easy on any one individual or their family. 

We are not fantastical knights in a story who all complete fairy-tale like quests and succeed in our goals.  Life has real limits, challenges, and risks.  Christopher was brave, but in his daring, he encountered a world that was not ready for him, and that he was not ready for.  His mother could not handle the challenge of raising him and abandoned her family.  His father loved him dearly, but after one lie Christopher could not fathom living with the instability not being able to believe everything his father said and refused the help of his most consistent caretaker.  The answer to life’s challenges is not always success.  However, I believe Mark Haddon, in his tragic ending that the narrator views as a success, wants to encourage empathy for those with disabilities and their families in acknowledging that the path is not easy and that there is no clear ending where the struggle stops and that no one is capable of everything.