Christopher Character Analysis in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

As the book progresses, Christopher is getting progressively more stressed out. This is expressed in the writing because there are more sections of him coping. Christophers way to deal with stress is by thinking logically to distract himself from his problems. His coping mechanisms are particularly expressed when he says, “And that made me think that there must be millions of miles of train track in the world and they all go past houses and roads and rivers and fields, and that made me think how many people must be in the world and they all have houses and roads to travel on and cars and pets and clothes…”(Chapter 197). At the beginning of the book, Christopher would wander off topic occasionally. We figured it out because every time he started to get stressed, he would add another chapter with random information which indicated that he was coping. These moments came more and more frequently as the book progressed, which demonstrates that Christophers stress levels have risen significantly since the start of the book. Another way Christophers increasing stress is shown is that there are more run-on sentences in his writing. As he is thinking to himself, he says, “And when you put something down somewhere, like a protractor or a biscuit, you can have a map in your head to tell you where you have left it, but even if you don't have a map it will still be there because a map is a representation of things that actually exist so you can find the protractor or the biscuit again.”(Chapter 193). The author of this book does a very good job of showing us how Christopher responds to stress. One of those ways is that his thought process gets more frantic. As Christopher told us, he will not tell lies, so he writes the book exactly how he thinks and sees it. If his thought process is more frantic, as it is in the quote, he will write more frantically. There weren't as many run-on sentences in the beginning as there are towards the end, which means that he was writing more frantically. If you combine all of that, it’s clear that Christopher has become more stresseed towards the end of the book.

Ed really cares about Christopher, even when they aren't having the best relationship. One main way that Ed shows how much he cares is that he makes an effort to talk to Christopher. A significant moment between Christopher and Ed happens when the author states,  “And then he held up his right hand and spread his fingers out in a fan so that I could touch his fingers, but I didn't because I was frightened. And Father said, "Shit. Christopher, please." And there were tears dripping off his face.” (Chapter 227). The desperation in Ed's voice and the tears dripping off his face prove that he cares, and that he wants things to get better between him and Christopher. Another way Ed proves that he cares for Christopher is that he stands up for him against his ex wife. This is explicitly expressed when Ed says, “‘No right? No right? He's my fucking son, in case you've forgotten."’(Chapter 227). Ed could have kept quiet, but he decided to stand up and defend his son, even though Christopher was mad at him. Being a parent requires you to support and love your kid even if you are going through a rough patch, and Ed is doing exactly that.