MODULE 3:

t e sTRanGe
The website of Autism Science Foundation
defines autism as follows:
Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are a complex set
of neurological disorders that severely impair social,
communicative and cognitive functions.
Individuals with ASD suffer from cognitive
impairments, although some have typical or above
average IQs.
Typical ASD behaviors include stereotyped actions
(hand flapping, body rocking), insistence on
sameness, resistance to change and in some
cases, aggression or self injury.
Between 30% and 50% of people with ASD have
seizures.
Autism was originally believed to be a form of
schizophrenia brought on by a traumatic experience
or bad parenting.
In 2018, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s
Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network
determined that approximately 1 in 59 children (1 in 37 for
boys, and 1 in 151 for girls) is diagnosed with an autism
spectrum disorder in the United States.
Discovering Autism
Autism was first described by Dr. Leo Kanner in 1943. He
reported on eleven children who showed a marked lack of
interest in other people, but a highly unusual interest in the
inanimate environment.
http://www.autismsocietyphilippines.org
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is a
2003 mystery novel by British writer Mark Haddon. Its title
quotes the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes in Arthur Conan
Doyle's 1892 short story "The Adventure of Silver Blaze".
Haddon and The Curious Incident won the Whitbread Book
Awards for Best Novel and Book of the Year, the Commonwealth
Writers' Prize for Best First Book, and the Guardian Children's
Fiction Prize. Unusually, it was published simultaneously in
separate editions for adults and children.
The novel is narrated in the first-person perspective by Christopher John Francis Boone, a
15-year-old boy who describes himself as "a mathematician with some behavioural
difficulties" living in Swindon, Wiltshire. Although Christopher's condition is not stated, the
book's blurb refers to Asperger syndrome, high-functioning autism, or savant syndrome.

In July 2009, Haddon wrote on his blog that "Curious Incident is not a book about
Asperger's... if anything it's a novel about difference, about being an outsider, about seeing
the world in a surprising and revealing way. The book is not specifically about any specific
disorder," and that he, Haddon, is not an expert on autism spectrum disorder or Asperger
syndrome.

The book uses prime numbers to number the chapters, rather than the conventional

successive numbers.
 The Curious Incident of
the Dog in the Night-Time
29. I find people confusing.

This is for two main reasons.

The first main reason is that people do a lot of talking without

using any words. Siobhan says that if you raise one eyebrow
it can mean lots of different things. It can mean “I want to do
sex with you” and it can also mean “I think that what you just
said was very stupid.”
 The Curious Incident of
the Dog in the Night-Time
Siobhan also says that if you close your mouth
and breathe out loudly through your nose, it can
mean that you are relaxed, or that you are
bored, or that you are angry, and it all depends
on how much air comes out of your nose and
how fast and what shape your mouth is when
you do it and how you are sitting and what you
said just before and hundreds of other things
which are too complicated to work out in a few
seconds.
 The Curious Incident of
the Dog in the Night-Time
The second main reason is that people often talk
using metaphors. These are examples of
metaphors:

I laughed my socks off.

He was the apple of her eye.
They had a skeleton in the cupboard.
We had a real pig of a day.
The dog was stone dead.
 The Curious Incident of
the Dog in the Night-Time
The word metaphor means carrying something
from one place to another, and it comes from the
Greek words µετα (which means from one place
to another) and φερειυ (which means to carry),
and it is when you describe something by using
a word for something that it isn’t. This means
that the word metaphor is a metaphor.
 The Curious Incident of
the Dog in the Night-Time
I think it should be called a lie because a pig is not
like a day and people do not have skeletons in
their cupboards. And when I try and make a
picture of the phrase in my head it just confuses
me because imagining an apple in someone’s
eye doesn’t have anything to do with liking
someone a lot and it makes you forget what the
person was talking about.
 The Curious Incident of
the Dog in the Night-Time
My name is a metaphor. It means carrying Christ
and it comes from the Greek words χριστος
(which means Jesus Christ ) and φερειυ and it
was the name given to St. Christopher because
he carried Jesus Christ across a river.
This makes you wonder what he was called before
he carried Christ across the river. But he wasn’t
called anything because this is an apocryphal
story, which means that it is a lie, too.
 The Curious Incident of
the Dog in the Night-Time
Mother used to say that it meant
Christopher was a nice name
because it was a story about being
kind and helpful, but I do not want my
name to mean a story about being
kind and helpful. I want my name to
mean me.
1. What are your reactions to the story? How is it
different from your expectations?
2. Did you find the story funny why?
3. How doers story change the way you look at
the people with autism? Why?
4. What do you think of Christopher’s
understanding of metaphors? Do you think he
is right or wrong – or he is both?
5. Would you call him intelligent? Why or why
not?
6. Does he make you look at things in a different
way? Why is that important?
7. Do you agree with him that people are
confusing? Why or why not?
8. Could you relate with him? Why or why not?
9. He end the story with the sentence, “ I
want my name to mean me.” What does
that mean?
10.What is social significance of the story?
Do you think you could ever
achieve such athletic
greatness even the odds
are stacked up against
you?
1. Go to your respective groups
2. Create a manifesto about your actions regarding
children with special needs.
3. Write how you will treat them, the kind of language
you should use when discussing them, as well as
the kind of language that is not acceptable.
4. Post your manifesto on your Facebook wall, using
the hashtag #autismawareness.