MARK HADDON STUDY GUIDE / BOOK SUMMARY

IMPORTANT QUOTATIONS - QUOTES AND ANALYSIS (Continued)

QUOTES FOR THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME

Another confounding aspect of Christopher's personality is his preference for certain colors - and corresponding hatred of others. He addresses this as well:

Mrs. Forbes said that hating yellow and brown is just being silly. And Siobhan said that she shouldn't say things like that and everyone has favorite colors. And Siobhan was right. But Mrs. Forbes was a bit right, too. Because it is sort of being silly. But in life you have to take lots of decisions and if you don't take decisions you would never do anything because you would spend all your time choosing between things you could do. So it is good to have a reason why you hate some things and you like others. (85)

In admitting some merit to Mrs. Forbes' opinion, Christopher shifts the question of hated colors from one of preference to one of expediency: the reason he hates certain colors does not come from an aesthetic or intuitive choice, but from an understanding that this makes his life easier by limiting his choices.

These limited choices no longer prove useful when contradictory information greets him with his mother's letters. Looking over the first envelope after reading its contents, Christopher tries to make sense of it:

I looked at the letter and thought really hard. It was a mystery and I couldn't work it out. Perhaps the letter was in the wrong envelope and it had been written before Mother had died. But why was she writing from London? The longest she had been away was a week when she went to visit her cousin Ruth, who had cancer, but Ruth lived in Manchester.

And then I thought that perhaps it wasn't a letter from Mother. Perhaps it was a letter to another person called Christopher, from that Christopher's mother.

I was excited. When I started writing my book there was only one mystery I had to solve. Now there were two. (99)

Ironically, Christopher had written just previously about Occam's Razor, where the simplest answer is often the right one. However, in his mind the notion of his mother being alive isn't the simplest answer because he has accepted it as a basic truth in his life. Realizing his mother is alive would lead to realizing his father lied to him, crumbling another foundation of his world view.

Christopher reprints the letters he reads from his mother, which has passages such........

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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time Summary Notes

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