In recent years, writers of fiction and non-fiction have become interested in examining the fictional worlds of characters in connection with ASD. This condition has become a popular phenomenon (Greenwell, 2004; Van Hart, 2012). Even though no explicit references to autism are provided in the novel, the evidence below provides definite clues that Christopher has HFA/AS, supported by reviewers and critics by mentioning the term autism on the book jacket of the Vintage Books edition. Sack, a well-known clinical neurologist, praises The Curious Incident as a ‘great insight into the autistic mind’.
Tom Billington (2006: 281-282), an educational and child psychologist, commends Haddon for the accurate depiction of his autistic character, which corresponds with his personal experiences of working with autistic individuals. Bellington refers to certain features of Christopher including his tendency to be interested in ‘minutiae’ and ‘deal computer-like with numbers’, his revulsion of physical touch and his attachment of timetables, all of which are stereotypical criteria in the clinical literature.
Mark Osteen, a professor of English and the father of an autistic child mentions his experience in teaching this novel to his undergraduate students. He points out that those students who have no prior knowledge about autism will ‘end up learning something about the disorder and, just as important, about their own cognitive and sensory (dis)abilities’
(Osteen, 2008: 40).
Scholars who work with Asperger’s children provide critical insights into Haddon’s work. According to Atkins (2006 in Muller, 2006: 122), Haddon is inconsistent in the characterisation of Christopher and may mislead readers ‘if they read [The Curious Incident]
as a definitive story of an Asperger’s individual’. Burks-Abbott (2008: 295) mentions ‘Today when I tell lay people that I am autistic, the first question they ask is “Have you read The Curious Incident...”’. Burks-Abbott (2008) argues that this novel has not accurately depicted autism and suggests that real autobiographical writers such as Dawn Prince-Hughe's (2004) Songs of the Gorilla Nation: My Journey Through Autism and Temple Grandin’s (1995) Thinking in Pictures: And Other Reports from my life and others can portray autistic minds precisely.
With regard to Burks-Abbot’s view that the depiction of autism by real autobiographical writers might be inaccurate, I argue in this regard, that my analysis of Haddon’s novel supports the idea that Christopher’s autism has been skilfully portrayed for two main reasons. Firstly, the power of Haddon’s depiction lies in the fact that he introduces
an Asperger’s mind with accuracy even though he is not himself autistic. This can explicitly be depicted in Christopher’s text of having almost all the features mentioned in the clinical literature of autism. Secondly, Haddon’s portrayal of Christopher shows his broad experience and massive understanding of this mental condition. I critically argue in my analysis in Chapter Five that Haddon, without exception, has proficiently succeeded in depicting an Asperger’s mind in Christopher’s fictional world, both in his abilities and his impairments.
For instance, he shows Christopher’s savant skills in mathematical formulae, geometry, prime numbers, science, and power of memory on the one hand, and his inability to interpret some lexical and grammatical and pragmatic issues in certain situations on the other. These two aspects of Christopher’s world, as shown by Haddon, realistically portray that HFA/AS individuals are highly specialised in certain traits but have certain impairments in social, emotional, sensory issues, etc.
Stuart Murray (2006: 39), a professor of contemporary literature and films, proposes that autism is ‘a source of endless potential for those seeking novelty in the construction of fiction’. Murray argues that the narrative of The Curious Incident creates an image of the
‘Asperger’s teenager, complete with ritualised mannerisms, love of logic and mathematics, limited emotional range and a lack of socialization skills, that itself coheres into a stereotype’.
Berger (2008: 272-278) proposes that Christopher has AS due to the presence of certain clinical autistic features in the narrative. Christopher is not socially interactive, he experiences sensory overload when being touched, is more relaxed with animals, he is
‘orderly’ and knows the time exactly, he likes ‘maps, diagrams and lists’; he cannot read body language or facial expressions and has problems in ‘deciphering what other people are thinking and feeling’. Christopher ‘lives in a world of physical objects located in space’ and
‘a world of routine, habits, of problems or puzzles that need to be solved’. Christopher’s
‘powers of observation, moreover, rely on precise spatial memories’ and his ‘Asperger’s mind focuses on a particular task to the exclusion of all others, notices everything relevant to that task, but is overwhelmed if faced with too much information on other matters’. Berger also clarifies that Christopher views people’s minds as ‘computers and consciousness is a picture on a screen’. This means that he is unable to distinguish ‘human consciousness from computer cognition’. In addition, Berger (2008: 271) states that Christopher’s prime numbers are those that are ‘divisible only by two integers–itself and one. Thus, 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, and so on are prime numbers, whereas 4, 6, 9, 12, 15, 16, 18, 20 and so on, are not’.
Trice (2008: 17) describes that Christopher has difficulties in social interactions, he had ‘a sensory meltdown, which he equates with a computer crashing’. She adds that
Christopher’s ‘internal films are multi-sensory’. She lists several stylistic elements of Christopher: ‘the literal-minded tone and numerous illustrations’, which characterize his
‘preference for logic over emotion and inclination towards visual thinking’.
Rachel Van Hart (2012: 28-29), whose two brothers are on the autistic spectrum, argues that The Curious Incident is considered as one of the first novels about autism. She compares five distinctive autistic features including: ‘[h]yper- and hyposensitivity …..….…
patterning…language barriers....social barriers....mind-blindness’ and applies them to five autistic characters, one of which is Haddon’s Christopher. Furthermore, she mentions that Christopher’s use of ‘excessive patterning’ has been identified as a device for filling ‘the informational gaps created by his inability to draw conclusions from social interactions or interpret the significance of social codes’. In addition, Christopher’s mind-blindness signifies his tendency to ‘adapt his logic-based cognition to an inference-based society’, which is a defining feature of autism.
Leung (2012: 63-68) associates Christopher’s behavioural conduct with certain autistic behavioural impairments including the tendency of being rigid to certain patterns and maintaining sameness, etc. Leung uses the term ‘autistic cyborg’ to indicate that autistic minds process their thoughts using ‘computer language’, particularly in the way Christopher depicts his memory processes and thinking by analogy to a computer. He also comments ‘the autistic lens becomes a literary vehicle to display the inadequacy of language’.
Muller considers that although Christopher has AS and impairments in social, cognitive, emotional and sensory issues, the novel is regarded as ‘a positive articulation of disability as ability, where we are invited to appreciate differences’, not as ‘deviations to be standardised’, but rather ‘unique, even enriching aspects of individuals that might be accepted’ (Garland Thomson, 1997: 79 in Muller, 2006:121).
Muller views Christopher’s disability as ability and concludes that even if Christopher cannot understand the signifier ‘single or return’ in the context of buying tickets to travel to London from the ticket seller, he will still be able to understand the signified ‘Do you want to go one way, or do you want to go and come back?’ (Haddon, 2003: 189 in Muller, 2006:
120). This means that Christopher can manage to interpret a situation in spite of the difficulties he faces.
However, I argue that even if Christopher could manage to buy a ticket to travel to London successfully, this happens after a great risk, and readers can infer that he is inept in social, sensory, emotional and cognitive issues. For instance, in the same journey,
Christopher steps very close onto the platform where the train moves, an officer attempts to rescue him but he rejects due to his sensory sensitivity to being touched. This is in itself a massive risk for Christopher’s life. The same conclusion can be drawn when Christopher carries his Swiss Army Knife to protect himself if anyone attacks him. In my view, this can hardly be interpreted as ability as Muller suggests, but rather a marked autistic behavioural impairment. Muller addresses other characters’ emotional detachments in the novel, namely, his mother and his father and explains that Christopher’s mother and father are depicted in the novel as typically developed characters in comparison to Christopher. They are emotionally disabled since his mother left Christopher and his father kills Wellington, the dog, to revenge upon Mr Shears.
I presume that Christopher’s emotional cues need to be interpreted differently from his father’s since his father’s emotional cues are associated with a particular situation with Mrs Shears where aggression and intentionality are involved. This situation requires further investigation since Christopher’s reaction to emotional stimuli is unintentional and is related to his mental condition as a feature of emotional impairment shared by individuals with HFA/AS. There are still a number of examples in the novel where readers can easily infer that Christopher has impairments in the expressive and receptive functions of language with his literal interpretation of others’ language where issues of pragmatics, metaphor and inferential meaning are involved.
Stylisticians including Semino (2014a, 2014b) observe that Christopher’s odd use of conversational strategies is shared with people with AS who struggle with ‘socialisation, communication and imagination’ (2014a). Semino provides some linguistic and pragmatic tools to demonstrate Christopher’s inadequacies and refers to certain autistic features such as Christopher’s exceptional capability in maths and science, particularly when he achieves an A grade, his interest in routines and sameness. Moreover, Semino (2014b) discusses three pragmatic failures of Christopher’s mind style and supports her claim with Landa’s (2000:
125–134) comments that ‘pragmatic impairment may be the most stigmatizing and handicapping aspect of autism’.
With regard to ToM impairment and non-impairment in relation to Christopher’s characterisation, several opinions have been discussed by researchers. Some scholars (Burks-Abbott, 2008; William, 2012) have reported that Christopher has a functional ToM in the way he presents his thoughts and desires. He knows if people are lying to him, and understands deception and other’s mental states. He can express his father’s emotions and empathy for
Toby when Toby went missing (William, 2012). According to Burks-Abbott (2008: 292-293), Christopher in certain places in the novel can understand people’s intentions, make a distinction between ‘what [he] know[s] (that the book has been discovered) and what [his]
father knows (that the book has been hidden)’ and can understand if someone is pretending
‘in order to deceive displays a high level of social savvy that is assumed to be above the reach of most autistics’. Other scholars agree that Christopher has a ToM deficit (Luckin, 2013;
Semino, 2014a) especially when he does not observe Gricean maxims and has a difficulty understanding people’s intended meaning in Speech Acts.
I support the argument that there is a marked ToM impairment in Christopher’s characterisation, especially when issues of emotion, feeling, social and pragmatic inferences are involved. However, Christopher does use excessive and unnecessary details to describe people, objects and events around him. If he could understand that those characters around him are thinking, imagining, expecting and predicting, in other words, having mental states, he would not have used redundant details, as concluded by Semino (2014a) and Luckin (2013). I also support William’s and Burks-Abbott’s views to some extent that ToM is not entirely absent in Christopher’s narrative discourse since he can understand characters’
intentions in certain situations.
Fanlo Pinies (2005: 352, 368) concludes that when Christopher is unable to give adequate answers to questions, he responds literally, specifically when indirectness is involved. He has ‘accurate self-knowledge about his traits and his accuracy in giving numbers, figures and listing’ is part of his self-concept. All those features appear to be common with AS people. Gregoriou (2011: 103–104) relates the ‘social deviance’ of Christopher into several clinical autistic features, including lack of ‘emotional empathy’;
difficulty in processing ‘figurative language’; ‘tendency to use logic in handling everyday life complexity’; ‘react[ing] aggressively’ when being touched. She also acknowledges that Christopher is a ‘gifted child, particularly where mathematics and memory are concerned’.
Luckin (2013) argues certain clinical autistic features of Christopher’s behaviour, namely, his need for order and clarity; his inability to excise irrelevant details from his narrative, his exceptional memory, his sensory sensitivities; his inability to differentiate important stimuli from non-important ones, etc.
The HFA Checklist is presented in the next section.