Dog_in_the_Night_Time

Summary: Chapter 229 That night, Christopher dreams a virus has killed nearly everyone on Earth. A person can catch the virus just by looking at someone that has it, even if the infected person is on television. The virus spreads very quickly until the only people left on Earth are people like Christopher who do not look at other people’s faces. In the dream, he can go anywhere he likes without fear of someone touching him or asking him questions. He can drive, and if he bumps into things it doesn’t matter. At the end of the dream he goes home to Father’s house in Swindon, only Father is gone. He makes himself Gobi Aloo Sag with red food coloring, watches a video about the solar system, plays computer games, and goes to bed. When he awakes from the dream he feels happy. Analysis: Chapters 211-229 Christopher’s successful arrival in London marks perhaps his greatest accomplishment in the novel and a significant step in his journey toward independence. Since Christopher had never traveled alone before this trip, taking the train by himself all the way to London presented a daunting task. In several ways, the trip epitomizes everything Christopher finds uncomfortable about the world. He had to navigate through large crowds where he was touched frequently, he had to navigate an unfamiliar environment, and he had to process large amounts of new information, which actually overwhelmed him to the point that he shut down at times. By meeting these challenges, Christopher proves to himself that he can overcome any obstacle on his own. In other words, he doesn’t need his father to take care of him and can live independently. Christopher’s journey to London takes on the qualities of an adventure story. While the experience of walking through a subway station and getting on the right train would be ordinary for many people , for Christopher these tasks present a significant challenge, mainly due to his condition and his inexperience with such situations. The large crowds and the huge influx of information Christopher experiences become life threatening in Christopher’s mind, and Christopher even says he can’t remember the exact details of the ad for Malaysia he saw in the station because he thought he “was going to die.” The novel communicates this experience to the reader with a series of hurried, breathless sentences that reflect Christopher’s distress and confusion, such as “And there was sweat running down my face from under my hair and I was moaning, not groaning, but different, like a dog when it has hurt its paw, and I heard the sound but I didn’t realize it was me at first.” The section even includes a situation that could have been genuinely fatal in which Christopher climbs onto the train tracks to retrieve Toby and narrowly avoids being hit by a train. Chapter 227, which marks the climax of the novel, effectively brings the major action of the story to a close while establishing one additional conflict to be settled: Christopher, Mother, and Father must come to terms with one another. When Christopher’s father comes to find him in London, after Christopher has reunited with his mother, we see for the first time Christopher, Mother, and Father interacting face-to-face. By this point, the relationships between the three characters have changed significantly, putting the situation at the beginning of the novel—Christopher living with his father and his mother absent from their lives—in flux. Christopher now knows his mother is alive and he intends to live with her in London. He also fears his father to the point that he’s afraid to be in the same room with him. Christopher’s mother, meanwhile, wants to be part of Christopher’s life again, while Christopher’s father is in danger of losing his place in Christopher’s life (the only relationship that hasn’t changed is the relationship between Christopher’s mother and father, who continue to dislike each other). As a result, Christopher’s life has become disordered. Christopher, Mother, and Father will have to work through their issues with one another to reestablish an ordered, stable life for Christopher, creating a final conflict to solve. In Chapter 229, Christopher again dreams of being almost entirely alone on Earth, giving him a sense of relief after his dramatic trip to London while also reflecting Christopher’s desire to be independent. In contrast with Christopher’s experience in the overcrowded underpass tunnel, Christopher’s dream makes him into one of the few survivors on the planet after a virus wipes out most of the population. This scenario represents an ideal life to Christopher. He could live without having to interact with other people and without worrying about other nuisances like someone touching him, which the reader has seen repeatedly to be something Christopher finds distressing. Perhaps more importantly, Christopher would be able to make his own decisions (an ordinary desire for a teenager). He says he wouldn’t have to go anywhere he doesn’t want to go, he could eat anything he wants, and he could play computer games for an entire week if he chose. Notably, he says Father’s house would now be his, because Father would be dead. Christopher expresses no sadness or remorse at this thought, but rather appears to enjoy the idea of living without his father, who has been the primary authority figure in Christopher’s life. Significantly, in the dream Christopher doesn’t replace his father with anyone, such as his mother or Siobhan, but imagines living on his own and taking care of himself. The fantasy insinuates that Christopher has a growing desire for independence not just from his father, but from authority figures generally.