In school I came across an interesting book titled The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, written by Mark Haddon. It talks about a boy named Christopher John Francis Boone, who is the protagonist of the novel. Christopher describes himself as a mathematician with some behavioral problems. Although it is not mentioned in the novel, is Christopher actually an autistic child.
Autism is actually a disorder, characterized by impaired social interaction and communication, and by restrictive and repetitive behavior. The signs of autism start showing before the age of three. Christopher, or. Chris as I’m going to call him in this essay has this kind of problems. But the thing that bothered me the most is the fact, that he was completely misunderstood. He had no one to talk to and no friends. His only friend was Siobhan, who was his mentor. She was teaching him how society works and how to behave within its complex guidelines.
Chris is a gifted math and science students, numbers were not a problem to him, on the contrary, they came as a second nature to him. In the novel we come across different problems that he has to solve. These problems are difficult for the reader to interpret, which makes it even more fascinating that Chris can solve them in such a succinct manner. Chris has a photographic memory and that is probably strongly connected to his was of solving problems. In the novel he says that his photographic memory is the reason why he understands Math. He says it is simple and there is only one right answer.
When reading the novel, it was confusing at first because Chris’ mind is so scattered, and the way he works out problems is not they way most people would think of doing so. After reading for a while, though, his thought process is not only understandable, it becomes somewhat