Homework for 10th RWM Class: Curious Incident

Tina:

Christopher’s condition causes him to see the world in a very subjective way, and as a result the reader may often interpret events differently than Christopher does. What role does this difference between Christopher’s understanding of events and the reader’s understanding of events play in the novel?

There are certainly differences between the perspective of Christopher and that of the readers. These differences are caused by the differences between Christopher's mental conditions and ours. Christopher is unable to understand expressions and feelings of people, and he always tend to use his logical and mathematical ways to see things and solve problems, so he was not able to get the real meaning of people, and he is more likely to doubt others while normal people are more able to understand one's metaphors and implications because they have the ability to understand other's feelings and emotions, and thus they can imply what others really mean behind their words. This difference actually adds a great number of humors into the story. For example, when Mrs. Alexander was going inside her house to get some biscuits and did not come back for quite a while, Christopher left because he thought that Mrs. Alexander was calling up a police. However, this action seems ridiculous to us. This is because we will normally consider that Mrs. Alexander is not young, so it may take some time for her to walk to find and get the biscuits. Therefore, this gap between the readers and Christopher actually sends out a sense of humor to people. Also, this gap strongly indicates that each person has his or her own perspective and opinion toward things. The weirdness of the actions of Christopher in fact creates a better view of the mind of Christopher for us. 

Tom:

Is father a good person or a bad person? 

In the beginning, there wasn't a lot of description about father, the writer only mentioned how Chris live with father and keep writing about Chris himself. Obviously, father was a good character in the beginning, he saved Chris from police station, he lied to Chris about mother’s death. However, there are still some points that indicate father was not a good character from the beginning. While Chris started to investigate who killed the dog, father warned Chris not to care about others business, however, we already known from the middle part of the book that father killed the dog, so it's their own business, not others. Father lied here and it mean he want to cover the truth that he killed the dog. From the second time father found Chris was looking for the killer of the dog, he fighter with Chris, it's a very normal thing that People want to find the killer and it's a small case. Father never hit Chris before, so it's the second point that father didn't want Chris found the killer because the killer is himself. 

Then we all known mother didn't die, she left Chris’s father. In some ways I felt a little bit shame for father. And Mrs Shears came and helped them. And father did two things wrong: 

1 he thought his relationship was good enough with Mrs shears That they can live together. 

2 he killed the dog. 

The first thing wasn't a big deal because they can rebuild the relationship with Mrs shears. However he had an argument with Mrs shears and their relationship fell quickly. From this point we can see a poor father want mental comfort but failed. Then he thought their status is lower than a dog, which made father killed the dog and became a bad character. 

We can predict what Chris’s future will be and we can also say although father did a lot of things that he thought was right, but he once and once hurt others by doing these things, which lead him become a bad Character.