Borrowed from http://curious-incident-assignments.tumblr.com
"A lovely piece... (Haddon) illuminates a core of suffering through the narrowly focused insights of a boy who hasn't the words to describe emotional pain"- Daily News
" Disorienting and reorienting the reader to devastating effect... as suspenseful and harrowing as anything in Conan Doyle" -Jay McInerney, The New York Times Book Review
Purpose-
The purpose of this book is to explore the many issues that Christopher faces as a result of his autism. Mark Haddon uses logos, syntactic permutation, a linguistic style, symbolism, and rhetoric to achieve his purpose.
Many of the issues Christopher faces are very common, and are further complicated by his peculiar perspective on life. Throughout the book, we see Christopher's struggle to become independent and find his role in the world. Since he has trouble making quick decisions, dealing with new environments, and understanding other people, Christopher has difficulty going out into the world by himself. "I do not like strangers because I do not like people I have never met before. They are hard to understand" (page 35). Christopher's condition allows him to see the world in a bizarre way and much of the novel allows the reader to directly share his perspective. For example, although Christopher classifies his book as a murder mystery, half of the chapters deviate from the story to give his perspective on certain concepts such as physics or math. The purpose of this is to show the reader the disorderliness of his brain and how it influences his life. As a result,the reader is able to unearth the story from Christopher's point of view and able to understand the reasons he behaves the way he does.
"Mr. Jeavons said that I liked maths because it was safe. He said I liked maths because it meant solving problems, and these problems were difficult and interesting but there was always a straightforward answer at the end. And what he meant was that maths wasn’t like life because in life there are no straightforward answers at the end" (pg. 61)