The Development of the Protagonist in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
This essay will focus on the novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon. Concretely, I will conduct an in-depth analysis of the protagonist in the story and dive into different details and events. This is to draw an image of how the main character develops throughout the novel. In simpler words, The story is about Christopher John Francis Boone and his personality which are central parts of the story. That is to say, he suffers from a psychological disorder that makes interaction with people around him a bit hard.
The author of the novel is Mark Haddon, an English novelist best known for this story which is the subject of this essay. Haddon has won prestigious awards during his career as a writer and novelist and among the most prestigious awards that he won, Commonwealth Writers Prize by Commonwealth Foundation.
The book is centralized about one main event which is when the 15 years old boy, Christopher Boone, finds a dead dog in his garden and becomes curious about the incident. However, the background of the story is that Christopher is living with his father, Ed. Ed has told Christopher that his mom is dead but Christopher while investigating the incident of the dog learns that his mother is alive and is married to another man. Christopher suffers from behavioral issues due to his psychological disorder. Therefore, he suffers from problems in dealing with others including his father who is living with him.
The protagonist’s character is developed upon the fact that he suffers from those behavioral issues and this is the antagonist in the novel. That is, how to overcome those behavioral issues while he investigates the incident of the murdered dog. However, the journey starts with investigating an incident about a murdered dog but ends in a way bigger discoveries that the protagonist makes, such as his mother still is alive and his father is the murderer of the dog.
The analysis shows that the protagonist, Christopher Boone, shifted from being insecure and dependent on his father to becoming more self-confident and understanding of his abilities. He could, through his investigations, reveal facts and deal with them while at the same time gaining self-confidence and becoming self-sufficient with his resources despite his behavioral issues.
References
Sparknotes. Retrieved 30/1 2022. Link: https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/the-curious-incident-of-the-dog-in-the-night-time/summary/
Wikipedia. Mark Haddon. Retrieved 30/1 2022. Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Haddon