The_Curious_Incident_of_the_Dog_in_the_Night_Time

The Curious Incident is not a genuine novel of growth and development because the protagonist proves to be incapable of change. CHAPTER 47 = IMPORTANT QUOTE ABOUT CHANGING. Christopher is a great example of a character that has a very limited growth potential though he does show significant differences towards the end. His mindset detains him from achieving a complete transformation since Christopher cannot and will never accept new ideas or concepts due to his Asperger’s Syndrome, and this allows virtually no room for change within the character. Christopher Boone has numerous personality and behavioral defects (which he even lists at on page 46) such as “not talking to people for a long time” and his unique thinking process. Put example' He is unable to neither understand nor feel emotions – other than sadness or anger – so that every thought he has is based on facts and logic. This way of “black and white” thinking is what prevents/detains' him from being able to grow and develop as a character because of how he doesn’t interact well with others and rejects anything relatively “new”. Consequently this provides him with fewer opportunities to change his views, since there is no one to prove him wrong or change his ways, apart from his father, whose only job seems to be supporting Christopher in whatever he believes. In short, he is very narrow-minded and so confident that he is always right, that as a result; he does not pursue anything new or challenging, This singles him out from most characters who have gone through challenges or journeys, because they tend to learn about themselves along the way and go through drastic changes to attain a completely new persona. As a character, Christopher is not self sufficient, and though he needs people he doesn’t want anything to do with them. His distaste for society is another barrier which stops him from developing because without someone else’s intervention in some form or another, he will not venture into other fields of interest such as…..'Going to the supermarket, for instance, would be a huge challenge for him to face considering the fact that he hates crowded areas, physical contact or speaking to strangers. Imagining him 15 years later as a 30 year old man, he would still need constant care from someone since he can’t deal with being in crowded areas or with anything that is yellow or brown (as shown on page 84.) This explains how his personality flaws will affect him in a long term sense since he can never change because that defies the root of his Asperger’s disorder (not liking change.) Even though he has many attributes to him which make it appear that he can never change, he does display few changes in his thoughts especially on the last page where he says “…I am going to university in another town…And I can live in a flat with a garden and a proper toilet… And I know I can do this because I went to London on my own, and because I solved the mystery of Who Killed Wellington' And I found my mother and I was brave and I wrote a book and that means I can do anything.” All through the book he has been somewhat full of himself (chapter 71: “All the other children at my school are stupid.”) but also aware of what his limitations (page 25: “He said that it was very difficult to be an astronaut. I said that I knew. You had to become an officer in the air force and you had to take lots of orders and be prepared to kill other human beings, and I couldn’t take orders. Also I didn’t have 20/20 vision, which you needed to be a pilot.”) are yet during the last few events he feels more confident with himself after going through the train station to reach his mother’s apartment and he simply says “I can do anything.” The previously stated quote differs greatly from the beginning of the novel in which he lists the reasons for why he cannot be an astronaut, therefore this shows that his already high self-esteem has risen even more towards the end of the book since he has discovered that there are many things he can achieve if he just pursued them just as he pursued the train station adventure. So, overall, Christopher has a mindset which rejects new places, people or things; has multiple behavioral defects that stop him from attempting anything new. Though, on the closing pages he realizes that he can push the limits to what he can do which proves that he has changed his way of thinking – in a diminutive manner – but could be one of the first steps towards a large transformation. All in all, he is unable to change dramatically though small and slow developments have been present and a full-on transformation could be possible, it seems quite unlikely.