The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
"And sometimes when I am in a new place and there are lots of
people there it is like a computer crashing and I have to close my eyes and put
my hands over my ears and groan, which is like pressing CTRL + ALT + DEL and
shutting down programs and turning the computer off and rebooting so that
I can remember what I am doing and where I am meant to be going"
(Pg. 143-144)
Within the mind
of Christopher everything is in a very organized and structured manner
according to what makes sense to him. However, with him being a special needs
child his way of thinking is a bit different to everyone except himself. He
often finds himself thinking in the way of a computer often referring to his
mind and memories as previously recorded and or a computer like system. When he
is in this way of thinking it often is a mechanism that calms him down quickly
instead of making him panic and feel distressed in new or strange places. Due
to Christopher's different mentality he is often "shutting down" and
then "rebooting" as a way to make sense of things and as a coping
mechanism when he finds himself in an unknown situation.
"All the other children at my school are stupid. Except I'm not meant to call them stupid, even though that is what they are. I'm meant to say that they have learning difficulties or that they have special needs. But this is stupid because everyone has learning difficulties because learning to speak French or understanding relativity is difficult and also everyone has special needs, like Father, who has to carry a little packet artificial sweetening tablets around with him to put in his coffee to stop him from getting fat, or Mrs. Peters who wears a beige-coloured hearing aid, or Siobhan, who has glasses so thick that they give you a headache if you borrow them, and none of these people are Special Needs, even if they have special needs"
ReplyDeleteI think that this shows Christopher's mind state when it comes to the word "Special Needs". Also it shows the type of people he thinks he is surrounded with. He thinks that they are all so stupid and that they have special needs and he doesn't. I find it interesting his mind state towards his classmates.