In 2003, British author Mark Haddon published his first book entitled as above (taken from a classic Conan Doyle story). Christopher John Francis Boone, the 15-year old narrator of the story, has some form of autism but happens to be an incredible math savant. In fact, he can list every prime number up to 7057. He goes to a school for what he calls 'stupid' children (there are several heart-wrenching scenes where he tells stories about his school-the children who have epileptic fits, the frequent fights), but he makes history by being the first child to be prepared to take A-level maths, apparently the equivalent of an AP test or SAT.
This quote almost made me reconsider my future as an English major and change to mathematics ASAP. [key word: almost]: "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."
This is coming from what many would call a mentally disabled teenager? Hell, he's deeper than I am.
So, this kid has major social problems. He can't bear to be touched, even by his single father, without screaming. He doesn't understand any human emotions except happy and sad, and he only learned about those with help from his counselor, Siobhan, the most abstract yet admirable character in the story. He loves his pet rat more than anything, and is more upset at almost losing him than he was about his mother's death.
Christopher finds his neighbor's dog dead one night, stabbed through the heart with a garden fork, and resolves to find the murderer. However, by investigating this, he accidentally uncovers secrets which his close acquaintances have been hiding for years. What are they? Completely unbelievable, yet this is a book and this child is clueless. And you are as clueless as Christopher. When he explains what he is thinking about, and why he is thinking about these particular things, you understand him. He makes perfect sense. Why wouldn't you run away in his position? Why wouldn't you sit and groan for three hours? You sympathize and empathize with the boy. I definitely cried.
If you believed that genetic manipulation was a good idea before, I hope you will think about it more. If we were to lose children like Christopher, who would be able to make such honest observations about the world? Consider it akin to genocide: wiping out a 'race' of people who are very much able to contribute to society. Of course, it is a struggle to be a family member of a challenged child. My own cousin has Asperger's, but the challenge is worth the rewards: the trust, the simplicity, the common sense, the lack of judgment. This book forces you to retreat from the ideal of a 'perfect' society, where everyone has a certain IQ or the right amount of social skills, and instead forces you to consider perfection in places where you would not expect to find it. Think about it.
"I think people believe in heaven because they don't like the idea of dying, because they want to carry on living and they don't like the idea that other people will move into their house and put their things into the rubbish."
"And I know I can do this because I went to London on my own, and because I solved the mystery…and I was brave and I wrote a book and that means I can do anything."
"The word "metaphor" means carrying something from one place to another . . . 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. I think it should be called a lie because a pig is not like a day and people 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 and 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. "
"Then he asked if I didn’t like things changing. And I said I wouldn’t mind things changing if I became an astronaut, for example, which is one of the biggest changes you can imagine, apart from becoming a girl or dying."
"Everyone has learning difficulties, because learning to speak French or understanding relativity is difficult."
No comments:
Post a Comment