Weekly Response

"And yet scholars in disability studies are right to point out that literary representation of people with disabilities often serve to mobilize pity or horror in a moral drama that has nothing to do with the actual experience of disability." (Berude, 570)

"I pulled the fork out of the dog and lifted him into my arms and hugged him. He was leaking blood from the fork holes. I like dogs. You always know what a dog is thinking. It has four moods. Happy, sad, cross, and concentrating. Also, dogs are faithful and they do not tell lies because they cannot talk. I had been hugging the dog for 4 minutes when I heard screaming. I looked up and saw Mrs. Shears running toward me from the patio. She was wearing pajamas and a housecoat. Her toenails were painted bright pink and she had no shoes on." (Curious Incident, 3-4)

I agree with Berude when I say that I think a lot of novels, and even movies, try to dramatize disabilities into something that they don't have to be. Often times, they try to make the person with a disability look like a monster -- or sometimes even a hero -- and they fail to point out that they too are humans, and while they're thoughts are different from ours, maybe they actually aren't so different. In other words, they aren't something that should be pitied or something that should cause horror, and I think that Haddon does a good job of capturing that idea in A Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

I chose the quote above from the primary text because I think it does a good job of capturing both perspectives. On one hand, we have Mrs. Shears, who immediately believes that the main character of the novel killed her dog. This continues on on page 6, when the police show up. Neither Mrs. Shears or the police seem to understand that the boy has a "disability" and that his thoughts are different, and so right away he is to blame. I guess in a way, the text is causing us to pity him, because he is being blamed for something that he didn't do. But then we switch his view, and we realize that he's actually very intelligent. He notices that Mrs. Shear's toenails are painted bright pink, and when the policeman asks his age on page 6, he responds down to the day. I guess what I'm trying to say is that this novel, since written through the boy's eyes, offers us a way into his head. He spells out thought for thought, like above with always knowing what a dog is thinking, and how the novel has little pictures and charts to show the audience. In this way, I think the author is turning us away from pity and horror and trying to get us to understand what goes on inside their head.