Tuesday Blog: Week Six

This week I have begun reading the book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon. This book follows a boy named Christopher, who discovers the dead body of the neighbor's dog. Mrs. Shears, the dog's owner, calls the police, and Christopher becomes a suspect. When a policeman touches him, he hits the policeman and gets arrested, later he gets released with a police caution. After being released he becomes obsessed with the crime and determined to figure out who killed the dog, going against his father's wishes for him to leave the situation alone. Christopher decides to write a book about everything that is going on. His dad later found the book and hid it from him. Christopher while searching for the book found letters from his mother which were dated after she died. He then learns that his mother is not dead, she had an affair with Mr. Shears and his dad kicked her out. This shocks Christopher and angers him deeply, but he also does not understand everything going on. Christopher decides to ignore his father, and as a result his father starts saying everything he has every lied to him about, one thing being the death of Wellington. It turns out that his dad actually killed him because of the affair.

Source: www.davidicke.com

Quote 

"I decided that it was a kind of puzzle, and if something is a puzzle there is always a way of solving it. It's like computers. People think computers are different from people because they don't have minds." (Haddon 163)

Christopher is determined willful person, who no matter what he encounters will try to solve it. that explains he drive to find out who killed the dog, and also explains his drive to do so well in his A level classes. His determination comes from his infatuation with puzzles and mysteries. In some ways Christopher's life is a puzzle because there is so much he does not know if his mother is dead or alive, where she is, and both of his parents have had an affair. Although his life is somewhat complicated Christopher’s brain works much like an organized computer. The fact that Christopher's brain brain works much like a computer would shows how his way of thinking is different from many other peoples. As I mentioned in a blog last week, Christopher has unique skills which attribute to how smart he is.

Although Christopher has autism, I believe that many people's brains also work like computers. A brain working like a computer implies that their brain has a logical way of operation and is organised in every aspect. More specifically, a routine would be a logical way of operation, and a memory or knowledge would be like a database on the internet. In my personal life I agree that our brains work in this way. A stimuli like a sight smell or taste acts as a google search, and our memories act as the results. The way we make decisions is also based off these things, and the way we read emotions is as well. Many articles have been posted and say how similar the brain is to a computer, and for an example of this check out the one linked below.

Source: towardsdatascience.com