The Curious Dog in the Night-Time

“The Curious Dog in the Night-Time”

In the novel “The Curious Dog in the Night-Time,” Christopher acts in what most people would call weird ways. When Christopher experiences stressful situations he copes with them by groaning. He even hits people when he is touched.

“[He] rolled back into the lawn and pressed [his] forehead to the ground and began to make the noise that father called groaning.”(7) Christopher has an emotional response of not wanting to talk and instead groan, because he cannot decipher the information all at once. His physical response is that “[he would] make this noise when there is too much information coming into [his] head from the outside world.”(7) This is a coping mechanism he uses through-out stressing events.

The response Christopher gets from another character is the feeling that he was weird. The police officer did not understand the way he coped when he is stressed out or scared. This behavior has gotten Christopher picked on through-out the story. His mother left partly because she couldn’t deal with his behavioral problems. She also could not understand what Christopher was seeing in his reality verses hers or anyone else’s.

Christopher, I believe he does not trust strangers let alone his own father touching him. When the police man tried to stand Christopher up, he did not like it at all. Stating,” And this is when I hit him.”(8) Christopher did not mentally mean to hurt the officer, but at the same time did not know how him he did not like to be touched. I feel that if someone asked not to be touched by an officer especially, they would think it was a joke.

The emotional response that he had was to think in his head “hey this guy is touching me and I don’t like being touched.” Even his father doesn’t get to touch let alone have a hug form him. He mentions “I held up my left hand and spread my fingers out in a fan and we made our