Okay, first of all, Mark Haddon said the narrator isn’t supposed to be autistic! In like, 2009. Six years after this book was published. I don’t know how many people were paying attention to updates by then; I wasn’t. If you’ve been living under a rock, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is a super famous mystery novel about a weird boy named Christopher. He finds his neighbor’s dog stabbed to death with a garden fork and becomes determined to identify the culprit. This is widely known as the “autistic teen plays detective” book. ‘Asperger’s’ is what the cover said, at one point.
Asperger syndrome was my first official diagnosis, before it became defunct in 2013 and was rolled into “autism spectrum disorder.” I went into this book expecting Christopher to be somewhat familiar.
Y’all. He so wasn’t.
To be honest, I didn’t have plans to educate myself on other people’s autistic POV characters until I tried this one and went, “Wait, what? Wow?” Millions of people think that Christopher’s representative of autistic people. Credit where it’s due: His atypical voice is deftly imagined and sympathetic. I like him. I appreciate that Haddon’s depiction led to people crediting autists with internal lives and agency. As a kid, I had people tell me that reading this book made them think about me differently, i.e., better. (I can thank Haddon for at least two acquaintances who I didn’t really like upgrading me from ‘idiot-shaped houseplant’ to ‘misunderstood, but human, weirdo’.)
But Christopher just does not sound autistic to me. Haddon said this:
“I have to say honestly that I did more research about the London Underground and the inside of Swindon Railway Station, where some of the novel takes place, than I did about Asperger’s syndrome. I gave [Christopher] kind of 9 or 10 rules that he would live his life by, and then I didn’t read any more about Asperger’s because I think there is no typical person who has Asperger’s syndrome, and they’re as large and diverse a group of people as any other group in society. And the important thing is that I did a lot of imagining, that I did a lot of putting myself into his shoes in trying to make him come alive as a human being rather than getting him right, whatever that might mean.”
That explains a lot. I don’t mind it in the least that Haddon didn’t aim to write a “typical” Aspergers character, since he’s right; we’re diverse. But, if I give a POV character my autistic perspective, what might surprise readers? What are the established stereotypes for narrators? (If we’re lucky enough to have stereotypical narrators— There aren’t many autistic POVs in books! There are certainly stereotypes for autistic characters though, like being overly literal or having a keen interest in STEM. Christopher checks those boxes.)
Since he’s been like the autistic book character for 20 years, let’s take a closer look at Christopher. Here’s what his voice is like:
- Christopher’s abnormally detail-oriented:
“It was 7 minutes after midnight. The dog was lying on the grass in the middle of the lawn in front of Mrs. Shears’s house. Its eyes were closed. It looked as if it was running on its side, the way dogs run when they think they are chasing a cat in a dream. But the dog was not running or asleep.”
2. Honestly, the defining characteristic of Christopher as a narrator is that the boy loves his run-on sentences. He forms opinions on a delayed timer, and defends them with a deluge of yet more detail:
“I decided that the dog was probably killed with the fork because I could not see any other wounds in the dog and I do not think you would stick a garden fork into the dog after it had died for some other reason, like cancer, for example, or a road accident.”
3. Despite all this observational work, Christopher expresses uncertainty in his conclusions. He doesn’t trust himself, and/or he struggles to move past ambiguity, and/or Haddon meant this quirk to read as a processing difficulty.
4. Christopher habitually memorizes stuff, like capital cities and prime numbers. We, the readers, are often treated to these fun facts.
5. Christopher can’t read any but the most simplified, stereotyped depictions of emotion. This is established via cartoon faces. He gets that smiley = happy and frowny = sad, and that’s where he taps out. In dialogue, you have to infer how the other characters are feeling from the details he reports. Loads of dots, few connections.
6. Speaking of how Christopher interacts with other characters, he lacks the social shame that characterizes every autistic perspective I’ve known of. When he screws up and upsets someone, it doesn’t seem to register with him. This is probably a continuation of the idea that even the most obvious emotional signals don’t reach him. I didn’t read the whole book, but in the first fiftyish pages, Christopher determinedly interviews his neighbors for clues on who stabbed the dog. Just marches up to their houses, asks uncomfortable questions, and is oblivious to negative reactions. What?
7. Christopher experiences overload. The narrative has a non-immersive, almost clinical style even then. A police officer responding to the dog’s death bombards Christopher with questions. He curls up, groans, and then hits the officer when the officer makes him stand. But this comes across differently from sensory overload, which is another aspect of the autistic experience that I think is crucial. Sensorium was just about absent from Christopher’s perspective. This was the single most jarring thing for me.
8. Christopher doesn’t understand jokes. I’m sorry, but most autistic people I know are funny as hell.
9. Christopher’s big on tangents. (Often featuring his fun facts.) I think he does this when upset, as a self-soothing thing.
10. Whatever this is:
“‘His face was drawn but the curtains were real.’
“If I try to say the joke to myself, making the word mean the three different things at the same time, it is like hearing three different pieces of music at the same time, which is uncomfortable and confusing and not like white noise.”
Struggling with multiple meanings? Not grasping abstract concepts? I’m built different, thanks. Some of us decided that zeugmas were our favorite literary device when we were nine. Meanwhile, Christopher explicitly dislikes metaphors (in a tangent where he lists several, details the etymology of metaphor, and calls them lies).
11. Drilling down on his behavior rather than his narrative voice, Christopher conveniently gives us a list:
All in all, on the surface, I can see why people latched onto Christopher as an autistic character. But I mean on the surface. The above are features of the kid we’ve all seen throwing a tantrum at the grocery store. For better or worse, this kid is the most visible ambassador for autism that many people will encounter in their lives. Haddon said he was basing Christopher off people he’s known. I totally believe him.
But, for me? Christopher’s interiority doesn’t track. His POV lacks the features I was expecting. I’ve read very few stories about autists, but dozens from autistic authors. Presumably, the narrative perspective they and I put on a page is intrinsically autistic. We don’t sound like Christopher.
This got me curious about other portrayals of autistic narrators. Next up: Speed of the Dark by Elizabeth Moon.