This book is an interesting one, and is different from most of the honors book's that I have read so far in that it takes place in the late 90's. It is a first person perspective of an autistic 13 year old investigating the killing of his neighbors dog. Of course that is not only what is in this book, but I am not going to spoil the book because it is a good one and it should be read by you, the reader of this blog, because if it isn't, you are missing out.
Seeing that the main character is autistic, autism being a social/communicative disorder, there aren't many descriptions in the book. Especially of people. But this blog is supposed to describe some of the people in the book, which I will try to do with the most accuracy possible.
Christopher Boone: Main Character
1. Physical Presence:
I personally see Christopher as a shorter fellow, probably around 5'5" or 5'6", with a thin to medium build. I also see him with a stressed out and tensed up posture, constantly nervous and trying to be aware of his surroundings. He doesn't seem very dangerous until he takes out his pocket knife because someone is being too imposing.
2. Physical Traits:
The only thing I know about the kid is that he is from the UK, not too far from London. So his hair is probably blonde, or a light orange. He probably has a thin nose, short face, blue or green eyes and freckles. Fair skin with no scars or anything, except maybe somewhere on his upper arm because of an accident (complete guess).
3. Clothing:
Christopher probably wears simple clothing, such as pants or shorts and a T-shirt. Except he probably also wears a vest sometimes because he mentions owning a vest on page 135. He always has his pocket knife on him, and also carries his pet rat, Toby, with him in his pocket through the second half of the book.
4. Behavior:
This subject is a doozy with this character. He is a mathematic savant, meaning that he has an inept ability to be amazing with mathematics in general. This is why the chapters go by prime number's, because Chris has memorized all prime numbers up to 7,057. He is also a great minesweeper player. He tends to groan when too many people or things are around him or going on in order to relieve pressure. He talks about it like pressing Ctrl+ALT+DEL on a computer to shut down the programs and turn of the computer so it can remember what it was supposed to do in the first place. He doesn't like it when people touch him, and if someone does he screams and sometimes gets violent in order to stop them such as when he hit a police officer on page 8, "I didn't like him touching me like this. And this is when I hit him." He never lies, and he starts almost all of his sentences with the word and. It makes sense why he does this, because of being autistic and all, and I think that it was a good idea to have almost all of the sentences start with and to show the effects of the disorder on someone's speaking skills.
5. Character's Role:
Christopher becomes somewhat of an issue to a lot of his neighbors and the people around him throughout this book, but in the end he fixes a lot of things that have affected him in the past without his knowing, and he goes on to pass an A Level math test with an A grade, which seems to be one of his goals throughout this book. He is a very goal driven person, and this is how he gets in the way of some people. The starting goal of his is to find out who kills one of his neighbors dogs, and through this he finds secret's about his family that I am not going to spoil for people who haven't read the book. Also, it is not mentioned very well in this book, but he goes to a special education school. He seems to be one of the more intelligent kids there, but it is still a little awkward some of the experiences he has at school.
6. Character's Religion:
He seems to be very adamant about not believing in anything like a God because, in his words on page 164,
"People believe in God because the world is very complicated and they think it is very unlikely that anything as complicated as a flying squirrel or the human eye or a brain could happen by chance. But they should think logically and if they thought logically they would see that they can only ask this question because it has already happened and they exist. And there are billions of planets where there is no life, but there is no one on those planets with brains to notice. And it is like if everyone in the world was tossing coins eventually someone would get 5,698 heads in a row and they would think they were very special. But they wouldn't be because there would be millions of people who didn't get 5,698 heads."In a weird convoluted sense you can sort of understand why he believes this. He does so because of his mathematical "savancy", and because he thinks that the odds are good enough that life such as we have on Earth would have happened eventually.
7. Other Character's View's:
The other characters in the book's view of Christopher is different, but, like I said earlier, everyone at some time sees him as a nuisance. His father loves him an amazing amount, the police in the book see him as a persistent problem, the people that he meets see him as a complete imbecile and just yell expletives at him, and his neighbors try to be nice but it is implied that they struggle to keep calm around him.
8. Character's Connection With Outside World:
Because this was a fictional book, the character doesn't have a real connection with the outside world, but what he represents does. Autism is a growing disorder, and now affects about 2 to 6 out of every 1,000 children born in America1, and the numbers are increasing dramatically each year.
9. Character's Name and Symbolization:
The character's full name is Christopher John Francis Boone. The character is a little odd with this name. Christopher means bearing Christ, but he doesn't believe in any religion. His second name, John, is almost completely out of place, being a hugely biblical name, it's original Hebrew meaning was "YAHWEH is Gracious", YAHWEH meaning God. Francis mean's Frenchman, which isn't so off the target with this character, because he even mentions going to France once in the book. Boone means good, which is also not against the character because he is always with good meaning. I am not sure why he has such a biblical name, and it is quite irritating. I think it might be because he bears a large mental load on his head every day, especially throughout the course of this book, and it is through the grace of God that he got through alive.
10. How Does The Character Develop?
The character develops quite a bit throughout this book. Solving many mysteries and problems prevalent around him, and going on a very long adventure through the UK. It is hard to say exactly how he changed, but he definitely had an experience through the book.
I think that the character is a very logical person that likes to stay organized and need's to know where everything is at all times, and needs to know what he is going to do every day, or else he is a very nervous and uncomfortable person. I think that the book is a good testament to what people who struggle with disorders can do, and what we need to see them as.
1, EMedTV. "Autism Statistics."Autism Home Page. 2 Mar. 2009 .
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