Homework for 9th RWM Class: Curious Incident

Tom's Essay:

Most detective story’s main character and there will be a lot of crimes around him/her. If the story is lead by people, the story will be extremely long and may be a little less intense. But is you drive the story by the plot, the story will have more mystery and make the story more interesting in order to make reader continue reading. For example, in sherlock’s stories there is a story about Sherlock was fighting and fell off the cliff, if you wrote is by character, it will become after Sherlock fell off the cliff and he grab the edge of the cliff and climbed up after others are gone. If you drive the story by plot it should be Watson’s reaction to Sherlock's death and suddenly Sherlock appears, obviously the second one will be more interesting. About the second question, I think writing about other character will make the story less interesting because if the writer wrote Chris’s mother haven't dead yet, the story will be harder to continue because we all know what will happen. So write in first person view of Chris is the best way to show the reader the whole story. And writing about others will only make the story chaos and less interesting. 

2 questions 

1: why Mrs. Alexander knows everything about Chris’s mother but Chris said Mrs Alexander is a stranger? 

2:why father hid letter from mother?

Tina's Essay:

Detective stories certainly have a man who plays an role as the detective, like Sherlock Holmes from the book series Sherlock Holmes, also Christopher from the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime. Although he is not a professional detective as Sherlock Holmes, his role is to be a detective and to reveal the outcome of the cause or the suspect of an incident, like the murder of the dog Wellington. It is true that the characters are very important, but the plot, the process of detecting is the real stimulus of the story. This is because for a detective story, it is not important to discuss a lot about the characters; the detective merely plays a role in revealing the truth of one incident, but without the plot, the story's theme would be taken away. For instance, the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime is sort of a detective story because it has the incident and the detective, Christopher, who is trying to find out who killed Wellington. The characters in the book, Christopher, his father or Mrs. Whatever does not matter a lot, they are just giving the background information of the incident, and they simply does not matter so much. However, the plot, the process of finding out the truth, does matter a lot, and it is the actual one that attract the reader's attention and keep the story going.

Other than the character of Christopher, the author does go into some characters into details a bit. The author talks about Christopher the most definitely because he is the narrator, and everything is his stream of consciousness after all. The author spends some words in Chris's mother's past life, and also included her as the writer of the letters that Chris is reading right in the second last chapter. Even though she passed away, some words are used to describe her.  The author included some details about the things that Siobhan taught Chris. It is my conviction that actually it will be a stronger mystery if we knew more about the characters. This is because as the information grows, there will be more consideration for us to include. More consideration means more choices that are eliminated, however, more possibilities can be provided by the increasing amount of information given. Therefore, I believe that it will be a stronger mystery if we knew more about the characters.