As you know, the summer reading is Mark Haddon's novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. (You might also be interested in reading this interview with the author and this article by the author, or listening to this interview with the author.) As I mentioned in the e-mail, you will have a quiz on this novel the first day of class. I also mentioned that you will have to write a paper on Curious Incident. The essay is due Monday, September 15, or Tuesday, September 16, whichever day you have class. Do not hesitate to ask me by e-mail (fmontas@mph.net) any questions about this assignment. Here are the expectations and the topics for this paper:
Write an essay two to three pages in length that addresses one of the four topics below. Your essay must include information from the beginning, middle, and end of the book.
In addition, I will look for five things in this essay: that you can make a point, elaborate on that point, stick to that point, use evidence to support that point, and put all of these together effectively. Beyond these concerns, I am curious to see what you take away from reading a novel independently.
Topic 1: Christopher Boone interacts with and relates to other people in ways that can make it difficult for them to understand him, and for him to understand them. One area that’s difficult for Christopher is love and affection. Do you think Christopher actually feels love for and from others (such as his parents), or does he process love the way he processes other facts about the world? Or does he understand love in some other way?
Topic 2: A critic has said that one important criterion for a great work of literature is its ability to make the reader feel both a sense of pleasure and a sense of discomfort. That is, you enjoy reading a great work of literature even though it presents some unpleasant truths. By this standard, do you think The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is a great work of literature? Be sure to discuss at least one specific source of pleasure and at least one unpleasant truth in Curious Incident.
Topic 3: After an important discovery, Christopher observes, “…the mind is just a complicated machine” (p. 116). What does he mean by this statement? What does it reveal about him as a character? Could he have made this statement earlier in the novel, before this discovery? By the end of the novel, do you think Christopher still believes the mind is just a complicated machine, or does he understand the mind’s complexity in a different way?
Topic 4: To some readers, Christopher may not seem very smart at the beginning of the novel, but we soon learn that he is, indeed, quite intelligent. What is it about Christopher that makes it appear as though he is not smart? How do we learn that he is, in fact, very smart? Given the differences between what he appears to be and how he actually is, what do you think the novel reveals about the nature of intelligence? By the end of the novel, how does Christopher himself understand his intelligence?
