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The text we'll be discussing is //**The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time** // by Mark Haddon. =====

**Members: Lim Kiat, Timothy Tan, Jeff, Hong Wei (no submission), Zhiwen (no submission), Wen Hao**
====**Job Description**: Find some special sections in the reading. Identify the context and significance of the quote. Choose parts that interest you or make you laugh/cry/emotional, puzzle you, are very descriptive, seem important.====


====**"Also, I do not know what Father means when he says 'stay out of other people's business' because I do not know what he means by 'other peoples' business' because I do lots of things with other people, at school and in the shop and on the bus, and his job is going into other peoples' houses and fixing their boilers and their heating. And all of these things are other peoples' business.** ====

**Siobhan understands. When she tells me not to do something she tells me exactly whata it is that I am not allowed to do. And I like this." (Chapter 59)**
In this short passage, we learn that Christopher has difficulty understanding figurative language and that he interprets things literally. He lives in a world where things are black and white, and in a sense, very logical and ordered, with no ambiguity. Herein lies his disability -- he cannot infer intentions nor deal with change or unpredictability. This is also why he has such a great fondness for Mathematics because Math is logical, predictable, absolute and follows a set of rules. The outcomes can always be calculated if one follows the steps logically. This short passage also tells us that his father is not equipped to handle Christopher's special need while his teacher, Siohban, is presumably better trained and hence relates better to him. She is able to tell him exactly what not to do and this makes him feel safe and secure. Lastly, the language of the narration is pretty simple and straightforward and the run-on sentences are used deliberately to show us his train of thoughts. The repetition of phrases gives the passage an authentic feel, as if it were really narrated by a naive and earnest child. (posted by Mrs Yong)

//**“Normally I would have got more and more frightened if I was walking to school, because I had never done it before. But I was frightened in two different ways. And one way was being frightened of being away from a place I was used to, and the other was being frightened of bring near where Father lived, and they were in reverse proportion to one another, so the total fear remained constant as I got further away from home and further away from Father like this** From this short paragraphed, we can infer that Christopher has a very logical and “mathematical” mind. He equated his level of fear as a result of the result of combination of the fear of leaving his home, the place he is familiar, and the fear of his Father. He said the two fears were in inverse proportion, immediately bringing mathematics to our minds. It is interesting that he is so geared towards mathematics and so logical that he can come up with such an equation when is experiencing anxiety. Most people like us would simply acknowledge these two fears and then go on to ponder about what to do next, instead of deriving such an equation. His talent in analyzing things should be applauded. We should also learn from him to be more observant and have a sharper mind in identifying relationships between things, as successful people had made use of this skill to discover the relationships between different things, especially in physics and mathematics. This leads us to the point that Christopher is special in his own right, and he is not exactly abnormal as some people see it. After all, he feels fear when confronting a new event (walking to school, in above excerpt) which he is unfamiliar to, just like we do, and I believe most of us would also like to avoid our own fathers if we found out they had killed a dog. Some people prefer social interaction to studying and vice versa. Therefore, I see his slant towards a really logical mind as a gift, while his inability in managing interpersonal relationship as a compensation for his talent in mathematics. People are all different from one another and Christopher being different from other people is normal. In the case of Christopher, we should recognize his talent and provide him with ample opportunities to succeed in his field. (Posted by WenHao)
 * Fear total ≈** **Fear new place x** **Fear near father ≈** **constant” (Chapter 179)**//

//"So I said I wasn’t going into the toilets because there was poo on the floor and it made me feel uncomfortable to think about it, even though Mr. Ennison had come in and cleaned it up. And I wet my trousers and I had to put on some spare ones from the spare clothes locker in Mrs. Gascoyne’s room. So Siobhan said I could use the staff room toilets for two days, but only two days, then I would have to use the children’s toilets again. And we made this a deal. " This is a rather unique scene, kind of unusual scene we see these days. Normal people would not have done this, here, normal being non-autistic. It is amusing to see the stubbornness of Christopher from this excerpt. The toilet had been dirtied, and then cleaned by a Mr. Ennison, but Christopher still refused to accept the fact that the toilet is clean, even up to the point that “it made [him] feel uncomfortable to think about it”. Christopher would rather wet his trousers, be embarrassed than going into the supposedly “dirty” toilet. He rejected the opinions of people around him and insisted on his own view. In his world, he sees everything differently, for instance, the red cars, black cars, his special food etc… therefore, resulting in the differing views between him and the world. It is quite prominent in this novel, many instances on how he thought that other people were handicapped and he is perfectly normal because they were not good with details, figures. To him, the world revolves around him.
 * Chapter 57**

Posted by Timothy Tan ~ To see the light, you must first learn to embrace the dark ~  //

In this passage, we can see Christopher’s interest in mathematics as he mentioned that he likes prime number. In the book, the chapters are also named using prime numbers instead of cardinal numbers. We can also see that because he is autistic, he believes that there is a pattern to everything and that things should be logical and ordered. Just like for prime numbers where t he numbers are seemingly random. Prime numbers are only related by the fact that they can only be divisible by 1 and themselves to get a whole number. Yet, he attributes a rule and a pattern to these numbers, which is in order to find a prime number, you have to divide it numbers to find out whether they are divisible or not. He also realizes that even though this rule is very simple, it is very difficult to find much bigger prime numbers. From the first paragraph, we can also see from the last sentence that his mind works logically. This is because he knows that big prime numbers are difficult to find, and thus, after mentioning that one can earn money from finding prime numbers which have more than 100 digits, he continues by saying that that would not be a good way to earn a living. I agree with what he had said in the second paragraph. Life can sometimes be logical, but yet, we sometimes cannot work out the rules for life, for emotions and for people. It would just be like big prime numbers, where “no one has ever worked out a simple formula for telling you whether a very big number is a prime number.” (Posted by Lim Kiat)
 * "Prime numbers are useful for writing codes and in America they are classed as Military Material and if you find one over 100 digits long you have to tell the CIA and they buy it off you for $10,100. But it would not be a very good way of making a living.**
 * Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them." (Chapter 19)**

   I guess this short paragraph further accentuates the exceptional way of how Christopher contemplates at events which occur in life. I wouldn’t say that Christopher is naïve or gullible because this short extract simply unveils the simple fact that we are all unique as individuals, and that we all exhibit disparate yet distinct traits of our personalities. I am very fascinated at Christopher’s outlook in life though, so simple and true, yet exuding an impressive sense of positivity which is unparalleled. I have great admiration and respect for Christopher because he incorporates what he learns from his interests into his values and abides by them. I find this trait very rare in competitive societies today, where many people put on false facades and betray their own values to climb up the political ladder or to attain fame and status. Though in life it is inevitable that we tend to complicate things, or find ourselves stuck in dilemmas, I hope that I will be able to emulate Christopher’s mentality towards trials and tribulations in life. I guess simplicity is a target in life which I’ve yet and hope to achieve. (Posted by Jeff)
 * "And when you look at the sky you know you are looking at stars which are hundreds and thousands of light years away from you. And some of the stars don’t even exist anymore because their light has taken so long to get to us that they are already dead, or they have exploded and collapsed into red dwarfs. And that makes you seem very small, and if you have difficult things in your life it is nice to think that they are what is called negligible which means that they are so small you don’t have to take them into account when you are calculating something."**

This paragraph is the cause of the whole story. Therefore this paragraph gives very important messages. However when we read through the story, we will possibly ignore this paragraph. It is just like a normal paragraph like others at its beginning. The surprising polt is the ending of this short paragraph. At the beginning of the paragraph, the story is just like a very normal night which the dog is just asleep. However the last sentence shows the surprising polt. Because the previous words are very normal, when I reach the last sentence, I was shocked. It shows there is something evil and strange. That is why Christopher steps into the case and try to find out the answer. When I read the paragraph, I also feel the exciting and the aspiration to the truth just like what Christopher was feeling. It leads me into the story and let me be one part of the story. I did not have this kind of feeling before reading this paragraph. However after this paragraph, I have the impulse to finish the book to find the result. Therefore this paragraph is one of the most important and attractive paragraphs in the whole book. （Posted by Yao Zhiwen）
 * It was 7 minutes after midnight. The dog was lying on the grass in the middle of the lawn in front of Mrs. Shears’ house. Its eyes were closed. It looked as if it was running on its side. The way dogs run when they think they are chasing a cat in a dream. But the dog wasn’t running or asleep. There was a garden fork sticking out of the dog . **

**It was** **5.54pm****, when Father came back into the living room. He said "what is this?" but he said it very quietly and I didn’t realize that he was angry because he wasn’t shouting.** **This is what Siobhan says is called a rhetoric question. It has a question mark at the end, but you are not meant to answer it because the person who is asking it already knows the answer. It is difficult to spot a rhetorical question.**
 * He was holding the book in his right hand.**
 * I said," it's a book I’m writing"**
 * And he said, "Is this true? Did you talk to Mrs. Alexander?"**
 * He said this very quietly as well, so I still didn’t realize that he was angry.**<span style="color: rgb(68,68,68);">
 * And I said "yes".**
 * Then he said, "Holy f** ***ing Jesus, Christopher. How stupid are you?"**
 * Then father said "What the f* did I tell you, Christopher?" this was much louder.**

In this short passage, we can see that Christopher’s father was intentionally hiding something from Christopher. His reaction was definitely overdone as Christopher was just trying to uncover the truth, and didn’t know that his own father was the actual murderer of the neighbour’s dog. Mrs Alexander was helping Christopher find out the truth about the death of the dog, however none of them knew the truth yet. The way Christopher’s father had scolded his own son really shocked me, as he had not only used such rude vulgarities at his son, but also scolded his own son ‘stupid’. As Christopher was just curious and he didn’t know that this matter related to his father, his father should never have called him stupid. Christopher’s father was in the wrong here as he was the one who committed the crime. From this scene, we can also see that Christopher’s father didn’t really care about him and instead looked down on his very own son.

We can see that Christopher was a really pitiful child, and he had to endure such insulting words from his very own father. This might have also attributed to or worsened his autistic behaviour. Christopher was told that his mother had passed away when she was still alive, and he also had to endure such insulting remarks from his father in his entire life. He did not have anyone who really understood him and if even his very own father had bullied and scolded him, it might not be surprising if Christopher had been bullied by others in his life. Also, we can see from “ ** It is difficult to spot a rhetorical question.” ** that Christopher had a simple and innocent mind. He is unable to understand the feelings of others easily, and therefore meets many obstacles in this complicated world. Therefore, from this short passage, we can see that Christopher is a rather pitiful boy and does not deserve such treatment from his own father.

Posted by: Tan Hong Wei (17)

**Group 2: Connectors Members: Chen Xu, Jeff, Jiesheng, Bing Lin, Daniel**
====**Job Description**: <span style="color: rgb(0,0,0); font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Your job is to find connections between the text and the world outside. This means connecting the reading to your own life, to happenings at school or in the community and to similar events in time and place, to other people and problems. You might see connections between the text and other writings on the same topic or by the same author. There is no right or wrong answer here – whatever the reading connects you with is worth sharing. Post your ideas below. Choose blue for font colour. ====

<span style="color: rgb(0,0,255);"> Chen Xu: I feel that the storybook has many many events that connects to the real world. Dont know which one to start with, so i will begin with the general one. The story depicted a "authoritative parent". The father is not exactly a bad guy, he loves his son but he was been over authoritative and protective. He chose to kept Christopher in the dark about the truth relating to his mom. In that situation, we can see the struggle of a parent. Father had his concerns that if christopher knew the truth, would christopher be able to take it. Christopher is slightly different from the rest of the people, he dont like to socialize at all. If he knew the truth all along, would he still believe in the people around him? From this I can see that father was trying to protect the son, his intentions were good but is it the best for the son? He did not consider the consequences about keeping Christopher in the dark. He did not take it into the consideration that what will happen after Christopher finds out the truth. This is pretty similar to what is happening around us now. Our parents sometimes tries to keep us in the dark and make decisions for us. To some maybe it only happened in primary school and some it is still happening now. We may or may not accept our parents' apology but if we think about it again, all our parents will do things that is good for us, at least from their point of view.

<span style="color: rgb(0,0,255);">Chen Jiesheng: The 15-year-old boy Christopher is a mentally retarded genius. He can tell all the prime numbers before 7057. He can remember all the capitals in the world. He is a trully maths genius. On the other hand, the boy is extremely bad at socializing. He doesn't understand jokes, facial expressions etc. He is an austic boy. He hates to be touched. This reminds me of another genius Sherlock Holmes, who is also expert in maths, memorizing,etc but selectively retarded in some subjects like humanities. However, these kinds of wizards will not have big achievements in the real world because we nowadays should have some basic knowledge of subjects which even we hate and we have to socialize with others in any minute. At the first glance of the book, we can hardly understand Christopher's behavior and thought. However, after the plot continues, I realize that it's not Christopher who is illogic but adults in the real world. Maybe Christopher is so true that it is hard to believe. But indeed, adults are sometimes acts in a confusing way which Christopher cannot imagine. This reminds me of economics. In the economics, there is this hypothesis that every person will act in a way to get most benefits and every person is rational and logic. However, in the real world, this is not the case. In the book, Christopher is the most rational and logic person, while adults are the reflections of people in the real world."Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away." Just like what this sentence has mentioned, in the real life, we all have so many patterns. The life may be easier if we can get rid of these patterns and pretences.

Bing Lin: This book indeed differs from typical novels since it is written from the perspective of an autistic child. This book has highlighted three main points that can be closely related to our lives.

Firstly, it is breach of trust(from the fact that Christopher's father lied to Christopher). <span style="color: rgb(0,0,255);">In the story, Chris's father, Ed Boone, lied to Chris that his mother was dead but in actual fact, Chris' mother left with another man. He also lied about the fact that he killed Wellington. After Chris learnt how his father breached his trust, he left his father to find his mother and loss faith in his father. From the story, Ed Boone lied to Chris because he did not want Chris' mom to be involved in Chris' life anymore. Hence, this was motivated by Ed's own self interest to keep his son all to himself. Hence, Ed was actually overprotecting his interest by breaching the trust of his son. In reality, lying or breach of trust is prevalent. Breach of trust between parents and children are common, which could be seen from the fact that some children use excuses such as project work to go out for a movie instead. On the other hand, parents breach the trust of their children through actions such as checking through contents in their computer and handphones. In our social circle, we can also be overprotective of our own interest that we start sowing discord about others or lie about certain things in order to make certain circumstances favourable to us.

Secondly, this book reflects the life of the underprivileged, in this case an autistic child. In one situation, Chris pointed out that people mocked students from Chris' school by calling them "Special Needs!Special Needs!" We can relate this to our community, where some people may be biased against the underprivileged or the handicapped. Some people in the society perceive the handicap and underprivileged as incompetent individuals as compared to a normal healthy human being. Some only sympathize them. After reading the book, I find that Chris is actually very talented in sciences and mathematics and he is able to explain certain scientific or mathematical concept that I don't even know myself. Furthermore, Chris is much more observant as compared to a normal person.  Hence, autism Autism has only made him limited in his ability to comprehend emotions. Therefore, we should not view the handicap or underprivileged in our society as incompetent individuals or only with sympathy. We should instead recognise their ability to do what a normal being can do or even achieve more than what a normal healthy being can and respect them for their determination to overcome their shortcomings.

Thirdly, Christopher reflected resilience in his efforts to find his mother. It was a great feat for Christopher to be able to travel from Swindon to London to find his mother. On the journey to search for his mother, Christopher struggled with his emotions countless times. Many times, he felt afraid of the unfamiliar surrounding or wanted to go back to Swindon or relapse into his usual conditions(e.g. switch off his mind, groaning). However, he managed to overcome his emotional battle and attempted to communicate with strangers. He also overcame his lack of general knowledge(e.g. don't what a "tube"/underground is). Christopher also strived hard and got an A grade for his A level Math, wrote a book, and displayed bravery in search for his mother in London. In our lives, we face many different problems and setbacks. Students face difficulties in their school work, adults are also brought under pressure from their work. To overcome all these problems we face in life, we should learn from Christopher and be resilient. When we encounter setbacks, we must try and pick ourselves up and adapt to situations like in Chris' case. After all, "only the fittest survive" in this world.

<span style="color: rgb(0,138,255);">Daniel: <span style="color: rgb(0,135,255);">This storybook contains many themes that ties in with our everyday lives. The most obvious one would be that this book addresses an autistic child, with the whole book being written by a child named Christopher, with special needs. The author clearly shows differences between normal children and children with special needs, by emphasising on how Christopher dislikes being touched, dislikes loud sounds(shouting), dislikes people laughing at him(even if it is totally harmless or just a joke). "I dont like it when people grab me. And I dont like being surpised either. So I hit (Father), like I hit the policeman when he took hold of my arms and lifted me onto my feet". "I do not like people shouting at me. It makes me scared that they are going to hit me or touch me and I do not know what is going to happen. The author also shows the special talents handicapped children have, in Christopher's case his amazing Mathematical skills, his interesting logics, his ability to observe, remember and to tell the truth. " I am going to university and study mathematics, or physics, or physics and mathematics, because i like them and im very good at them." I do not tell lies." " A lie is when you say something happened which didn happened" " I cant tell lies". All these have something special to do with our everyday lives as it teaches us to appreciate handicapped people in the society, people with "special needs". Although we may have differences, we must know that these people are still human and most have special talents that normal beings do not. By learning to appreciate their talents, we would be able to aid them in living a fruitful life, just like Christopher.

Another special theme of the story would be the one about always telling the truth. Yes, we have heard it for years. Honesty is the best policy, but hey, who actually sticks by it? In this book, Christopher always tells the truth( apart from white lies which he considers reasonable) not because he is a good boy, but is due to the fact he is unable to conjour up fiction. " A lie is when you say something happened which didn happened, But there is only ever one thing which happened at a particular time and particular place....... makes me shaky and scared". Although he does tell white lies, it is not considered lying as he speaks the truth, just not the whole truth. This theme about being truthful certainly speaks to us in our everyday lives. In the current fast-paced, competitive world, most people lie with no concern, without batting an eyelid. They believe that so long as their lies get them out of trouble and does not harm anyone, it is a white lie, but is it so? Where has the virtue of honesty vanished to in the 21st century? I hope for the day where people realise that lying does them no good? Like in the book, where Chris's Father lies to him about his mother, and he ends up being separated from his son in the end; sure, he was able to spend quality time with his son for many years, but telling the truth would have been the better solution. Picture this scene: Mother: Have you done your homework Tom? Tom( who has not finished his homework and lies to continue playing his video game): Yes I have, Mom, Let me get on with my game. (The next day) Teacher: Why did you not do your homework, Tom? I am sending you to detention and calling up your parents. Look where lying got Tom? Wisemen have said it over and over again: Honesty is the best policy.

The final theme of the story which I believe is the most applicable is the theme about simplicity. Christopher dislikes proper novels as they over-complicate settings with their bombastic use of language. " I do not like proper novels. In proper novels, people say this like, " I am veined with iron, with silver and with streaks of common mud, I cannot contract into the firm fist which those clench who do not depend on stimulus." Also, as seen from the simple use of words that form this marvellous novel, simplicity is the best way to go(other than in math where problems may not be that simple). This theme should be introduced to the citizens of this hectic, sophisticated world of the 21st century.Although it is virtually impossible to keep EVERYTHING sweet and simple, people should learn to simplify events and not try to complicate them. To give an example, homework is given to students, students should complete it before deadlines, instead of procrastinating and resulting in punishments for not completing work. They should keep it simple by getting through the 2 hours spent on completing their work, instead of complicating matters by not turning work in and resulting with hours and hours of pain and punishment. To end off, I believe that we should all attempt to lead simple, happy lives and making everyday a Super Good day, instead of complicating matters and causing each day to be a Black Day.

**Job Description**: Research the writer's life and see the impact that it had on the book. Bring relevant details to highlight portions of the text.
The more difficult thing was constructing the shape of the story. I knew there was a story; once you find a dog with a fork through it, you know there's a story there. The more difficult puzzle was this: I wanted the whole book to be in Christopher's voice, but the paradox is that if Christopher were real he would find it very hard, if not impossible, to write a book. The one thing he cannot do is put himself in someone else's shoes, and the one thing you have to do if you write a book is put yourself in someone else's shoes. The reader's shoes. You've got to entertain them, and there's no way he could have done that. It took me a while to figure out that puzzle. The answer I came up with is having him be a fan of the Sherlock Holmes stories. That way, he doesn't have to put himself in the mind of a reader. He just has to say, //I enjoy Sherlock Holmes stories and I'll try to do something similar to that.// It was that. That was the biggest puzzle for the book. When I solved that, I began to see how I could shape the story. People have said to me that it's a desperately sad book and they wept most of the way through it. Other people say it's charming and they kept laughing all the time. People say it has a sad ending; people say it has a happy ending. Because Christopher doesn't force the reader to think one thing and another, I get many different reactions. Ironically, when I talk to people who like the book, they talk about Christopher's voice and his character and situation; nobody mentions the plot at all. From this interview, it clearly shows that Mark's inspiration for that piece of novel is not entirely due to the fact that he had worked with the autistic. Moreover, he likes to use disability as a perspective in viewing the world and seeing things which result in a different impact to his readers. In fact, he has created pieces of literary works regarding disabiliy, coded fromt the interview " <span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #4c290d; font-family: 'Helvetica', 'sans-serif';">Disability crops up here and there in my work. Since I finished the novel, one of the things I've done was I wrote a radio play for BBC Radio 4 in the U.K. about two brothers, one of whom has Down's Syndrome." Besides, he said "<span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #4c290d; font-family: 'Helvetica', 'sans-serif';">autism wasn't a term that was even used much at the time, and only in retrospect do I realize that some of the people I worked with had autism, although they had it much more seriously than Christopher does." The reason for the imgae of a dead dogwith a fork stuck through it, is to allow the reader's to have a gripping image in their mind. This is because Mark felt that people thought the book to be dry as no one would like to read about a 15 year old with disability living in Swindon with his father. However, there are still much connections between the content of the book and Mark. <span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #000000; font-family: 'Helvetica', 'sans-serif'; mso-ansi-language: EN; msoansilanguage: EN;">His atheism might be inferred from //The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time// in which the main character declares that those who believe in God are stupid. In the interview, Haddon said that he is most like Christopher in terms of math, "<span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #4c290d; font-family: 'Helvetica', 'sans-serif'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-font-family: 宋体; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;">I'm most like Christopher in respect of his math. Most of that came straight out of my own head. Obviously, the puzzles ultimately come from somewhere else, but most of those puzzles are things that I've enjoyed doing at one time in my life. And if you enjoy math and you write novels, it's very rare that you'll get a chance to put your math into a novel. I leapt at the chance."
 * ====Biographical details and inspiration (You may include interviews on Youtube) - **Ziyuan, Yu Ann**====
 * ====From Yu Ann, This is an interview from Powells.com which vividly shows the inspiration and life experiences that Mark Haddon went through to allow him to create such a wonderful novel.====
 * <span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #4c290d; font-family: 'Helvetica', 'sans-serif';">Dave: **<span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #4c290d; font-family: 'Helvetica', 'sans-serif';"> Where did you find the original impulse to write this novel? I know that it wasn't a matter of you thinking you'd write a book about an autistic boy, as some might presume.
 * <span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #4c290d; font-family: 'Helvetica', 'sans-serif';">Mark Haddon: **<span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #4c290d; font-family: 'Helvetica', 'sans-serif';"> No, very deliberately not. And I think if I had done that I'd have run the risk of producing a very stolid, earnest, and over-worthy book. It came from the image of the dead dog with the fork through it. I just wanted a good image on that first page. To me, that was gripping and vivid, and it stuck in your head. Only when I was writing it did I realize, at least to my mind, that it was also quite funny. But it was only funny if you described it in the voice that I used in the book. So the dog came along first, then the voice. Only after a few pages did I really start to ask, //Who does the voice belong to?// So Christopher came along, in fact, after the book had already got underway.
 * <span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #4c290d; font-family: 'Helvetica', 'sans-serif';">Dave: **<span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #4c290d; font-family: 'Helvetica', 'sans-serif';"> Did that seem a daunting prospect at first? How long did it take to develop Christopher into the character he became?
 * <span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #4c290d; font-family: 'Helvetica', 'sans-serif';">Haddon: **<span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #4c290d; font-family: 'Helvetica', 'sans-serif';"> I think once I heard the voice I knew that Christopher would be quite easy. I started writing in that voice, and I found it so engaging myself that I knew I could write in the voice for a long time.
 * <span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #4c290d; font-family: 'Helvetica', 'sans-serif';">Haddon: **<span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #4c290d; font-family: 'Helvetica', 'sans-serif';"> I think once I heard the voice I knew that Christopher would be quite easy. I started writing in that voice, and I found it so engaging myself that I knew I could write in the voice for a long time.
 * <span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #4c290d; font-family: 'Helvetica', 'sans-serif';">Dave: **<span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #4c290d; font-family: 'Helvetica', 'sans-serif';"> Upon finishing it, I was left wondering, //Is this book about Christopher?// To me, and I think to many adult readers, the story he tells of everyone around him resonates at least as much as his own.
 * <span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #4c290d; font-family: 'Helvetica', 'sans-serif';">Haddon: **<span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #4c290d; font-family: 'Helvetica', 'sans-serif';"> Yeah. I think that mirrors the position of a writer, of me, because I think most writers feel like they're on the outside looking in much of the time. But we all feel that sometimes. All of us feel, to a certain extent, alienated from the stuff going on around us. And all of us at some point, rather like Christopher, have chaos entering our lives. We have these limited strategies we desperately use to try to put our lives back in order. So although in some senses he's a very odd and alien character, his situation is not that far removed from situations we've all been in at one time or another.
 * <span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #4c290d; font-family: 'Helvetica', 'sans-serif';">Dave: **<span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #4c290d; font-family: 'Helvetica', 'sans-serif';"> I feel more grounded. The first time through I was trying just to make sense of everything. And one thing that's incredibly funny, but at the same time shocking and sad, is how rude most strangers are to Christopher. His fear of strangers is only more and more justified as the book progresses. The novel, modelled as a mystery, is a puzzle. Pieces fall into place as the story moves along.
 * <span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #4c290d; font-family: 'Helvetica', 'sans-serif';">Haddon: **<span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #4c290d; font-family: 'Helvetica', 'sans-serif';"> That's true. This seems strange now, but the other reason I constructed it the way I did, I really thought to myself, //Who on earth is going to want to read about a fifteen-year-old kid with a disability living in Swindon with his father?// And I thought to myself, //I better make the plot good.// I wanted to make it grip people on the first page and have a big turning point in the middle, as there is, and construct the whole thing like a bit of a roller coaster ride because readers wouldn't necessarily be interested in Christopher's world view.
 * <span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #4c290d; font-family: 'Helvetica', 'sans-serif';">Dave: **<span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #4c290d; font-family: 'Helvetica', 'sans-serif';"> You worked with children with disabilities, but that's a while back in your past.
 * <span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #4c290d; font-family: 'Helvetica', 'sans-serif';">Haddon: **<span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #4c290d; font-family: 'Helvetica', 'sans-serif';"> It is. In fact, it's so far in my past it's eighteen or twenty years ago now that autism wasn't a term that was even used much at the time, and only in retrospect do I realize that some of the people I worked with had autism, although they had it much more seriously than Christopher does.
 * <span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #4c290d; font-family: 'Helvetica', 'sans-serif';">Dave: **<span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #4c290d; font-family: 'Helvetica', 'sans-serif';"> The math is also something that you bring to the book from your own background.
 * <span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #4c290d; font-family: 'Helvetica', 'sans-serif';">Haddon: **<span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #4c290d; font-family: 'Helvetica', 'sans-serif';"> I'm most like Christopher in respect of his math. Most of that came straight out of my own head. Obviously, the puzzles ultimately come from somewhere else, but most of those puzzles are things that I've enjoyed doing at one time in my life. And if you enjoy math and you write novels, it's very rare that you'll get a chance to put your math into a novel. I leapt at the chance.
 * <span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #4c290d; font-family: 'Helvetica', 'sans-serif';">Dave: **<span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #4c290d; font-family: 'Helvetica', 'sans-serif';"> In another interview, you mentioned the idea that it's not so much the idea of writing about a disability as much as the different worldview a disability might impose on the narrator, some unconventional perspective, that's of interest to you in creating characters.
 * <span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #4c290d; font-family: 'Helvetica', 'sans-serif';">Haddon: **<span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #4c290d; font-family: 'Helvetica', 'sans-serif';"> Disability crops up here and there in my work. Since I finished the novel, one of the things I've done was I wrote a radio play for BBC Radio 4 in the U.K. about two brothers, one of whom has Down's Syndrome. For me, disability is a way of getting some extremity, some kind of very difficult situation, that throws an interesting light on people. But it's also something that's terribly, terribly ordinary. There are these extreme situations, but they're happening somewhere in your street at this very moment. And that's important to me, to find the extraordinary inside the ordinary.

> The other question I find myself having to answer at least once a week is: 'What's the difference between writing for children and writing for adults?' > I generally take the union line. There is no real difference. Writing for children is bloody difficult; books for children are as complex as their adult counterparts and they should therefore be accorded the same respect. > Most children's writers do the same. And rightly so. Despite His Dark Materials at the National, Jacqueline Wilson being crowned Queen of Library Lending and the continuing global reach of Hogwarts, the job still sits in many people's minds somewhere between reporting for the local paper and doing watercolours of cats. > Shortly after Curious Incident won the Whitbread Prize, the NB column in the Times Literary Supplement cited this as one more step towards 'the Juvenilisation of Everything'. > So it's hardly surprising that children's writers want to beat certain people about the head with a leatherbound volume of The Wind in the Willows. > The truth, however, is more complex than the union line. > Of course, something happens as you move along the spectrum from Where's Spot? to Mrs Dalloway. And it's not just that the readers get larger and, in many cases, hairier. > Nor is it that the job gets harder. A picture book is a fiendishly difficult thing to write (let alone illustrate). It took at least 50 drafts and more than two years for me to whittle The Sea of Tranquility from a bloated 50,000 words to a workable 500. Which seems like a fair trade. If kids like a picture book, they're going to read it at least 50 times, and their parents are going to have to read it with them. Read anything that often and even minor imperfections start to feel like gravel in the bed. > I know some authors who have written very successful picture-book texts in an hour of white-hot inspiration but this only serves to demonstrate to the rest of us how infuriatingly elusive the secret is. Why, for example, do the Mr Men books work so incredibly well when they seem to have been produced at speed with a pack of elderly felt pens by a small boy with an overdue school project? > It's not a difference in subject matter, either. There are now some very good books for toddlers about sex, and plenty of thrillingly parent-frightening novels for teenagers, many of them written by Melvin Burgess. > It's not a difference between one book and another, or between one reader and another. It's a difference between ways of writing and ways of reading. For me - and perhaps this is not so odd for a writer whose next book involves skin cancer and nervous breakdown - the difference is about death. > Not literal death, which has been dealt with even in picture books, such as John Burningham's wonderful Granpa, but death's smaller harbingers: illness, failure, loss, the irony that we have infinite dreams but find ourselves stuck in one body for one life. > Appalling things can happen to children. And even a happy childhood is filled with sadnesses. Is there any other period in your life when you hate your best friend on Monday and love them again on Tuesday? But at eight, 10, 12, you don't realise you're going to die. There is always the possibility of escape. There is always somewhere else and far away, a fact I had never really appreciated until I read Gitta Sereny's profoundly unsettling Cries Unheard about child-killer Mary Bell. > At 20, 25, 30, we begin to realise that the possibilities of escape are getting fewer. We begin to picture a time when there will no longer be somewhere else and far away. We have jobs, children, partners, debts, responsibilities. And if many of these things enrich our lives immeasurably, those shrinking limits are something we all have to come to terms with. > This, I think, is the part of us to which literary fiction speaks. > Genre fiction says: 'Forget the gas bill. Forget the office politics. Pretend you're a spy. Pretend you're a courtesan. Pretend you're the owner of a crumbling gothic mansion on this worryingly foggy promontory.' Literary fiction says: 'Bad luck. You're stuck with who you are, just as these people are stuck with who they are. But use your imagination and you'll see that even the most narrow, humdrum lives are infinite in scope if you examine them with enough care.' > Obviously, we all know men of 50 who have never paused to consider their own mortality, but I'll wager that very few of them are reading Middlemarch. > I don't mean that literary fiction is better than genre fiction, though I do prefer curling up with with an author such as A.M. Homes rather than Helen Fielding. Nor do I mean that the distinction is a rigid one. On the contrary, some of the best novels - Jane Eyre, The Woman in White - have a foot in both camps. I mean only that novels can perform two functions and most perform only one. > Another question I've been regularly asked over the past year is what models I had in mind when writing Curious Incident. Was it To Kill a Mockingbird? Was it Catcher in the Rye? > In fact, the book most often in my mind was Pride and Prejudice. > This was what I was trying to do in Curious Incident. To take a life that seemed horribly constrained, to write about it in the kind of book that the hero would read - a murder mystery - and hopefully show that if you viewed this life with sufficient imagination it would seem infinite. > When I was writing for children, I was writing genre fiction. It was like making a good chair. However beautiful it looked, it needed four legs of the same length, it had to be the right height and it had to be comfortable. > With Curious Incident, I was trying to do something different. The first thing I was doing was writing to entertain myself rather than the person I remember being at six, or eight. Second, yes, the book has simple language, a carefully shaped plot and invites you to enter someone else's life. And these, I think, are the aspects of the book that appeal most to younger readers. > But the book, I hope, does something more than that. The legs aren't quite the same length. It isn't entirely comfortable. It's about how little separates us from those we turn away from in the street. It's about how badly we communicate with one another. It's about accepting that every life is narrow and that our only escape from this is not to run away (to another country, another relationship, a slimmer, more confident self) but to learn to love the people we are and the world in which we find ourselves. > As Christopher, my main character, says: 'People go on holidays to see new things... but I think that there are so many things just in one house that it would take years to think about all of them properly.' > And I don't believe you can fully understand this aspect of the novel (or of any novel) until you have heard at your back 'Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near'. > As a kid, I didn't read a great deal of fiction and I've forgotten most of what I did read. The Log of the Ark, Stig of the Dump, Diggy Takes His Pick; after that, my memory is very foggy indeed. > I was born too late for steam trains and a lazy eye meant I'd never be an astronaut. I wanted to be a palaeoanthropologist, excavating Australopithecus bones in northern Kenya. So I read books about chemistry and how cars worked and life on the ocean floor. I still have my favourite childhood book sitting near my desk, partly so I'm ready to answer the question: 'What was you favourite book as a child?' It's Origins of the Universe by Albert Hinkelbein ('On Mars, there may be vegetation consisting of mosses and lichens'). > I don't remember deciding to become a writer. You decide to become a dentist or a postman. For me, writing is like being gay. You finally admit that this is who you are, you come out and hope that no one runs away. > But I do remember reading R.S. Thomas at 14 - 'Iago Prytherch his name, though, be it allowed,/ Just an ordinary man of the bald Welsh hills,/ Who pens a few sheep in a gap of cloud' - and being astonished that someone could arrange these perfectly ordinary words in a way that did amazing things to the inside of my head. > I've spent most of my life trying to understand that mystery, and trying to give other people the experience I had. Wei Ze and Chi Chian: Mark Haddon’s inspiration came from the image of the dead dog with the fork through it. That particular image was gripping and vivid, and it stuck in his head. So, the dog came along first, then the voice. Only after a few pages did he start to wonder who does the voice really belong to? So Christopher came along after the book had already got underway. Though he had worked closely with children that have disabilities about twenty years ago, his experience with them has influenced him to pen down his story that tends towards autism.
 * From Ziyuan, this is what Mark Haddon said when he had maken it as bestseller and win many awards. This is from guardian.co.
 * "Three years ago, I wrote The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, a novel set in Swindon about a teenage boy with Asperger's syndrome who discovers a murdered poodle on a neighbour's lawn. It was published in two identical editions with different covers, one for adults and one for teenagers. To my continuing amazement, it seems to have spread round the world like some particularly infectious rash.
 * In some ways, it has changed my life completely. In other ways, nothing has changed at all. Almost every journalist asks: 'Where did you get the idea from?' And because of my protagonist's obsession with the unpleasantness of yellow and brown, quite a few have asked: 'What's your favourite colour?', not something Monica Ali or Jonathan Franzen have to field very often.
 * ====Autism and Asperger: **Chi Chian, Wei Ze**====
 * ====Autism and Asperger: **Chi Chian, Wei Ze**====

In his book, “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time”, Mark Haddon inculcated empathy into the readers through the life of Christopher, a 15-year old autistic child, providing readers with a better idea of the chaotic and confusing life which autistic people have to undergo. Christopher suffers from a form of autism known as Asperger’s Syndrome, of A.S. for short. People who suffer from this kind of brain disorder typically face problems with social interaction and communication, and refuse to accept changes in routine. They will be obsessed with repetitive preoccupations like languages, numbers and symbols. Christopher’s sustained obsession with mathematics, detail, colours and astronomy and his unwavering attention to routine and violent aversion to socialization reflects his condition, though this is unnamed in the novel. In the book, Mark Haddon had displayed his deep understanding and knowledge about people with autism. Be it the disorders they face or the dilemmas going on inside their mind, he certainly captured these emotions clearly. Notably, this knowledge that he possessed were experiences he gained while working with autistic people when he was young.

Below is a link to an interview of the author, Mark Haddon. This interview seeks to find out more about the inspiration and creation of this fine piece of work, and the process of crafting the novel. http://www.powells.com/authors/haddon.html

Settings in the novel: **Zhiyuan**
> There are two main points of the setting that are related to the author's life. 1. First of all, and most clearly seen, is how the book is written in the first person perspective of a fifteen year-old child down with Asperger's Syndrome. Although this point has already been stated by Chi Chian and Wei Ze, but i believe it is still a relevant point under "Settings in the novel". Moreover, the story is set in a suburban environment: the main character lives in Swindon, a small town near London. Through the process of solving the "murder" of the dog, Wellington, we took a peek into the life of Christopher, his everyday happenings in his home and in the school. Even when he went to find his mum, the story continues in a familial kind of setting. It is known that the author once worked with children with disabilities. We can then infer that the experience more or less affected the setting and the character of the story, alhough there have been no details about the author's experience with children with disabilities.
 * Zhiyuan:

2. We also see the book being rather "mathematical". There are the small little details about how Christopher was interested in Mathematics (he likes to read mathematics and science books), how he counted exactly how old is he ( x years x months x date, when the policeman was asking him about the death of the Wellington). Not only was he interested, he even applies his knowledge of prime numbers into the chapters. I believe most readers, without noticing the unique way of numbering chapters, would have been stunned by the numbers: two hundren plus chapters in this average-sized novel. And in an interview with Powells.com, Mark Haddon said that he actually "leapt at the chance" "to put [his] maths into a novel", suggesting that his interest in maths did contribute to the many "puzzles" in the book.

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====Please note that you are NOT to cut and paste text from existing websites. You are required to give your own input, i.e. gather the ideas. synthesize them and express them in your own words. You may of course, post relevant links to the resources which you have consulted.====

Chapters 2 to 61: **Cheong Keat**
asleepJohn Franciscountries in the worldflashesfork On the way homein the futureChristopher

Chapters 67 to 113: **Yu Ge**
In this part of story, it tells us mainly about how Christopher began to investigate the death of the dog, Wellington. The very first thing he did is to go and ask some neighbors including Mr. Thompson's brother, lady at 42 number house, Mr. Wise and Mrs. Alexander some questions about the death of Wellington. After deducing Christopher thought it must be someone known killed Wellington and he locked on Mr. Shear and put him as the Prime Suspect. Christopher wanted to search for some evidence to prove what he thought. However, unfortunately he got nothing from that. During supper, his father asked him and got known that Christopher was investigating the incident, and his father got angry with him and let him promise to stay out of other people’ business. No more improvement did Christopher get until he met Mrs. Alexander who was also his neighbor on his Supper Good Day. Mrs. Alexander told him that his mother had love with Mrs. Shear and maybe that was the reason why his father hated Mrs. Shear. From the reaction of Mrs. Alexander, the death of Christopher’s mother was known by many people in the town. Christopher promised Mrs. Alexander not to tell his father about the conversation so that his father would not recall the bad memories. Fortunately Christopher got closer and closer to the whole truth.

10. roisterer - a blustering, turbulent person
Timothy Tay Kai Cheng

patio - a courtyard [of a house], enclosed by low buildings or walls. spaniel - a submissive, fawning, or cringing person they had a skeleton in the cupboard - a colloquial phrase used to describe an undisclosed fact about someone which, if revealed, would have a negative impact on perceptions of the person.

digression - to deviate or wander away from the main topic or purpose in speaking or writing; depart from the principal line of argument, plot, study, etc.

marzipan - a confection made of almonds reduced to a paste with sugar and often molded into various forms, usually diminutive fruits and vegetables.

it's brass monkeys out there - [ brass monkey - a metal stand that formerly held cannon balls on sailing ships], hence the meaning is: it's very chaotic out there,it's like hell has broken loose

i'm going to it the hay - i'm going to sleep

let's rustle up some tucker - let's cook something fast

aperture - A fixed or adjustable opening in a piece of equipment such as a camera or microscope that lets light pass through a lens or mirror. e.g camera lens

clementines - small, sweet variety of tangerine with orange-red skin.

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Timothy Tay Kai Chengpatio - a courtyard [of a house], enclosed by low buildings or walls.spaniel - a submissive, fawning, or cringing personthey had a skeleton in the cupboard - a colloquial phrase used to describe an undisclosed fact about someone which, if revealed, would have a negative impact on perceptions of the person.digression - to deviate or wander away from the main topic or purpose in speaking or writing; depart from the principal line of argument, plot, study, etc.marzipan - a confection made of almonds reduced to a paste with sugar and often molded into various forms, usually diminutive fruits and vegetables.it's brass monkeys out there - [ brass monkey - a metal stand that formerly held cannon balls on sailing ships], hence the meaning is: it's very chaotic out there,it's like hell has broken loosei'm going to it the hay - i'm going to sleeplet's rustle up some tucker - let's cook something fastaperture - A fixed or adjustable opening in a piece of equipment such as a camera or microscope that lets light pass through a lens or mirror. e.g camera lensclementines - small, sweet variety of tangerine with orange-red skin.: You will assess the quality of your classmates' input. Post your evaluation using the Forum Discussion thread titled "evaluation".Assessor of Group 1: Assessor of Group 2: Assessor of Group 3: Assessor of Group 4: