Summary: Chapter 2
The book opens seven minutes after midnight, when the narrator, Christopher
John Francis Boone, finds Wellington, the poodle belonging to Mrs. Shears, his
neighbor, dead on Mrs. Shears's lawn with a garden fork through its side.
Christopher touches the dog’s muzzle and observes that it is still warm. He wonders
who killed Wellington, and why.
Summary: Chapter 3
Departing from his story (Christopher does this frequently throughout the
novel), Christopher explains that he has difficulty determining people’s emotions
from their facial expressions. But he can name each country in the world, their
capitals, and every prime number up to 7,057. He recalls the first time he met
Siobhan, eight years earlier. She drew faces on a piece of paper and asked him what
emotions the faces expressed. Christopher could only identify the sad face, which
represents how he felt when he found Wellington dead, and the happy face, which
shows how he feels when he wanders the neighborhood at three or four in the morning.
He could not identify the other emotions.
Summary: Chapter 5
The story returns to Mrs. Shears’s lawn, where Christopher removes the garden
fork and picks up Wellington. Mrs. Shears appears on her patio and yells at
Christopher to get away from her dog. Mrs. Shears does not stop, even when he puts
the dog down. So Christopher puts his hands over his ears and curls into a ball on
the grass, trying to block out the sound.
Summary: Chapter 7
Christopher reveals that we are reading his murder-mystery novel, written
after Siobhan advised him to try writing a story he would want to read. Siobhan
thought that the opening of the novel should grab people’s attention, which is one
of the reasons that Christopher started it with Wellington's death. The other reason
is that he could not start it any other way: this story actually happened to him,
and he has trouble putting events in any order other than the order in which they
occurred.
Summary: Chapter 11
At the crime scene, two police officers arrive. Christopher initially finds
their presence comforting, but he grows agitated when the policeman begins to ask
him questions too quickly, seeming to implicate him in the murder. Christopher curls
into a ball again, and he hits the police officer when the officer tries to lift him
to his feet.
Summary: Chapter 13
Christopher states that his book will not be funny. To be funny you have to
tell jokes, and jokes often rely on the multiple meanings of words. The fact that
one word can have multiple meanings confuses Christopher and makes him
uncomfortable, so he will not put jokes in his book.
Summary: Chapter 17
The officer arrests Christopher for assault. As the officer drives him away,
Christopher considers the Milky Way through the window of the squad car. He feels
comforted by the order he sees in the stars, and by the fact that policeman has done
his job in a predictable manner.
Summary: Chapter 19
Christopher describes the rules used to determine prime numbers, a potentially
infinite number of which exist. He thinks prime numbers act like life: logical, but
impossible to fully comprehend. He likes them, so he has ordered the chapters in his
book according to prime numbers.
Summary: Chapter 23
At the police station, Christopher empties his pockets at the front desk,
carefully describing every item. When the police put him in his cell, he marvels
that the cell is almost a perfect cube. He wonders if Mrs. Shears lied and told the
police that he killed Wellington.
Summary: Chapter 29
Christopher finds people confusing because they often communicate non-verbally
through facial expressions. They also use metaphors, which equate one thing with
another when neither has any actual relation to the other.
Summary: Chapter 31
Father arrives at the station and greets Christopher by holding up his hand
with his fingers outspread. Christopher does the same, allowing their fingers to
touch. Christopher explains that they greet each other this way because he does not
like to be hugged. An officer takes Christopher to the investigator, who releases
Christopher with a stern warning.
Summary: Chapter 37
Christopher explains that, in order to form a lie, he would have to pick an
event that did not happen to replace the one that did. But he can’t pick any one
thing from among the infinite number of things that did not happen, so he does not
tell lies. Consequently, everything that he has written in his book is true.
Summary: Chapter 41
On the drive home, Christopher tries to apologize to his father for making him
come to the police station, but his father does not want to talk about it. When they
arrive home, Christopher goes to his room. At 2:07 a.m. he goes to the kitchen to
get a drink before bed, and notices his father sitting alone in the living room with
tears in his eyes. Christopher asks him if he feels sad about Wellington. His father
stares at him for a long time before replying that he does.
Analysis: Chapters 2-41
The book begins unconventionally, starting with Chapter 2 instead of Chapter
1, and rapidly progresses through the prime numbers until we have finished Chapter
41 at the end of the section. Christopher has chosen to write the book this way
simply because he prefers prime numbers, with their specificity of pattern, to
standard numbers. Christopher also digresses repeatedly from the mystery of
Wellington’s murder right from the start, veering into discussions of what he knows
(countries and their capitals, for example) and the difficulties he has
understanding people. The reader can see by this point that, although The
Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time may use some conventions
of murder-mystery narratives, it will hardly be a conventional story for that genre.
The ways it diverges from convention, digressing into discussions of numbers for
instance, give the reader insight into how Christopher views the world.
Specifically, Christopher’s observations on prime numbers tell us that Christopher
values order and has a gifted mathematical mind.
Christopher has very poor social skills, stemming from his inability to
imagine what other people are thinking or feeling, and in this section we already
see this limitation playing out in the story. For instance, we see that Christopher
is easily misled by lies when Christopher finds his father alone in the living room
crying. Father says he feels sad because of Wellington, though the reader recognizes
that this excuse is not true. Christopher, who cannot understand that his father is
lying, believes him and returns to his room without questioning the matter any
further. This difficulty identifying lies makes it all the more extraordinary that
Christopher investigates the mystery of Wellington’s murder. We also see
Christopher’s poor social skills at work when he has difficulty explaining himself
after Mrs. Shears and the policeman confront him about Wellington. He quickly feels
overwhelmed and withdraws into a ball. Repeatedly, Christopher’s social deficits
lead to misunderstandings and conflicts. For instance, Christopher’s inability to
explain why he was holding Wellington’s body leads Mrs. Shears to think that
Christopher killed Wellington. In fact, Christopher’s poor social skills play such a
prominent role right from the start of the story that the reader can assume they
will have greater ramifications later on.
Christopher recognizes his social limitations, and he focuses instead on the
extraordinary intelligence he displays in other regards. The main evidence of this
intelligence comes from Christopher’s ability to deal with concepts that other
people might find abstract and difficult to comprehend. He clearly and succinctly
explains why the Milky Way appears in the sky as it does, for example. He also tells
the reader that he can identify all the prime numbers up to 7,057, indicating that
he has a particularly savantlike ability with numbers. Christopher compares prime
numbers to life, saying that both are logical but you could never work out the rules
no matter how hard you try. He believes that, like prime numbers, life abides by
rules. In other words, he does not see life as random and chaotic, even though he
recognizes that he cannot know all its rules. Instead, Christopher knows his
strengths and weaknesses and lives contentedly with them.
Christopher’s obsession with the physical details of his surroundings,
particularly aspects of color, number, and time, serves as a great asset to him in
his investigation. Christopher describes scenes in very specific detail. After the
police put him in jail, for instance, he comments on the ordered dimensions of his
cell before considering why he is in prison in the first place. When the officer
makes him turn in his belongings at the police station, he lists in great detail
every item in his pockets. This attention to detail helps Christopher to counter the
disadvantages he faces from his lacking social skills and allows him to gather clues
related to Wellington’s murder. He notices that Wellington’s muzzle still feels warm
when he finds Wellington dead, for instance.
