The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

When he was a young child, Christopher had no idea that other people had minds and thoughts. Now, he knows they do, but unlike most people, he doesn’t think people simply peer out at the world through their eyes but instead look at images their brain creates to help them interpret the world.

He learned this from his readings in science, and he describes experiments that prove this to be true: people’s eyes shift from one thing to another, and if they saw the entire process of shifting, the world would appear to reel dizzily, so the brain blinds that view for a moment and fills it in with an image that isn’t so disconcerting.

He’s also aware that people think a lot about the future, and this affects their decisions and plans in ways that wouldn’t occur to, for example, a dog. People think they’re different from computers because people have feelings, but to Christopher, feelings are simply more images on the screen of their minds. 

His father helps Christopher bathe, dry off, and put on clean clothes. Then, his father takes the dirty clothes and bedsheets downstairs to the washing machine. Christopher sits on his bed and calms himself by doing arithmetic in his head.