English Presentation 2010

Slide 1: 

The Unusual Elements of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

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Definition of Asperger’s disorder In a child or adult with no deficiencies in overall intellectual development, self-help skills, or language, A. At least two of the following: 1. Difficulty using gaze, facial expressions, gestures, and body posture normally in social interactions. 2. Failure to develop appropriate relationships with others the same age. 3. Apparent lack of spontaneous desire to share interests, achievements, or pleasures with others. 4. Failure to reciprocate, socially or emotionally. B. At least one of the following: 1. Abnormally intense preoccupation with any single interest, or preoccupation with an abnormally narrow interest. 2. Rigid insistence on certain seemingly pointless routines or rituals. 3. Stereotyped and repetitive movements. 4. Preoccupation with parts of objects. Adapted from the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Revision, 2000.

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‘It seems that for success in science or art a dash of autism is e s s e n t i a l. For success the necessary ingredients may be an ability to turn away from the everyday world, from the simple practical, an ability to rethink a subject with originality so as to create in new untrodden ways, with all abilities canalised into the one speciality’. –Hans Asperger

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“[I]f you enjoy math and you write novels, it’s very rare that you’ll get a chance to put your math into a novel. I leapt at the chance.”—Mark Haddon The Use of Math in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Conway’s Soldiers : 

Conway’s Soldiers “[Conway’s Soldiers is]a good maths problem to do in your head when you don't want to think about something else because you can make it as complicated as you need to fill your brain by making the board as big as you want and the moves as complicated as you want" Christopher says that “ I know what the answer is because however you move the colored tiles you will never get a colored tile more than 4 squares above the starting line” His goal isn’t to find a solution, but to use math therapeutically.

The Monty Hall Problem : 

The Monty Hall Problem “And this shows the intuition can sometimes get things wrong. And intuition is what people use in life to make decisions. But logic can help you work out the right answer.” Christopher uses this to show how his use of logic gives him an advantage over others who rely on “intuition.” Did Mark Haddon use this complicated problem to allow readers to feel confused in a manner similar to how Christopher feels when forced to interact socially?

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"Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them.“ "All the other children at my school are stupid. Except I'm not meant to call them stupid, even though this is what they are." “and if you have difficult things in you life it is nice to think that they are what is called negligible, which means they are so small you don’t have to take them into account when you are calculating something.”" “and it means that sometimes a whole population of frogs, or worms, or people, can die for no reason whatsoever, just because that is the way the numbers work. “

The use of “ImageText” in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time : 

The use of “ImageText” in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time Autistic individuals do tend to excel in their visual-spatial abilities. Temple Grandin, the autistic author of “Thinking in Pictures” on her thought process: “Non-autistic people seem to have a whole upper layer of verbal thinking that is merged with their emotions. By contrast, unless I panic, I use logic to make all decisions; my thinking can be done independently of emotion.”

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“I wanted the whole book to be in Christopher's voice, but the paradox is that if Christopher were real he would find it very hard to write a book.”—Mark Haddon

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Have a SUPER-GOOD day!