Gaps

Key aspects of narrative are missing from The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime that is the result of Christopher's narration. While Christopher is not specified as having any cognitive condition, the way he narrates the novel suggests he may have Aspberger's syndrome. Although the novel is classified as a narrative, the fact that key aspects of the typical narrative are missing suggest that this classification may not be the most appropriate. We as the readers are required to fill in the emotional gaps, because while Christopher attempts to explain emotions to us, he doesn't necessarily communicate the emotion well. Additionally, Christopher has difficulty understanding sequential events, and thus sequence is often interrupted, leaving it up to the reader to piece together the events occurring in the novel. While some readers may find this annoying, I personally think it creates more of a connection to the novel. I also think it truly helps to develop the reader's individual reading of a novel. The emotions a reader applies to a novel where the emotions aren't spelled out says a lot about the reader, and how they interpret the novel. I think that an interesting experiment would be to compare how readers read the novel, and whether or not the emotional response is similar. It'd be interesting to see if our brains read the novel as an autistic individual would or if it would just be differing emotional responses.