The three sets of theories that I would like to keep with me in my academic and non-academic life are the ones that I feel are most relevant to me as a person. I chose the Marxist set of theories due to its inescapable social forces that economic systems create and maintain. I chose the Historical/Cultural set of theories for interpreting the social conditions that are produced by past events and the rituals of culture that one has to perform while living within that culture. I chose my last theory, the Feminist theory because women are a major part of society, important contributors to that society, and if one is to believe that we all contain masculine and feminine features, then this set of theories is just as important to myself as a man in this society as well. I selected “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” by Mark Haddon, as my reading that I hope to demonstrate my understanding of theories upon. This story is based on an autistic boy named Christopher for whom the world is a continuous and ongoing mystery. Despite his handicap he persists in his self-imposed investigation of the death of a neighbor’s dog for his own self satisfaction even though the social conditions that he finds himself in is completely against, even hostile towards his pursuit of the truth. I feel that we all are in this condition to some degree.
The first theory that I hope to elaborate upon is the Marxist set of theories. What drew me to select this set of theories is the inescapable economic shaping of forces that we have to endure throughout our lives.
The Tyson text mentions on page 61, “Alienated labor- disassociated not only from the products they produced but from their own labor as well”. I have felt this way in all of the jobs that I have had, that I am a mere cog in the wheel of someone else’s wealth accumulating system while I was tossed pennies for my labors. I sometimes, with some people, have felt this way in my relationships with others as well, that I am just coming and going in and out of other people’s lives, as they come and go from mine, never producing anything meaningful and lasting, only occupying the finite and precious moments of my life with idle conversation and the empty going through the motions in the participation of events that I find myself in. Most of us would be intimidated to find a dead dog on a neighbor’s lawn, and would shrink away from any kind of involvement with it. Christopher, motivated by his own internal need, pursues what is worth moving toward and what is worth staying away from. He invests his energies toward the clearing of the fog of mystery, to settle upon facts, upon absolute truths. Christopher’s labors are for his own ends, what he feels or is compelled to investigate, what his own value system is. He labors for himself despite the consequences of what may happen, aware that the social climate is against him, yet continues to invest his energies in the direction he wants, the direction that he feels his precious energies should go. What is worth doing for the sake of getting the thing done, and what is worth putting all of our heart and soul into?”
The second set of theories that I chose were the theories of New Historicism and Cultural Criticism. We are a product of where we come from, and where we come from is a starting place in the direction we will go in life. Some of us die in the same place that we are born, and some of us end up on a different continent all together. I chose this set of theories as I feel it is important to know from where you came, and that it can give you a sense of where you are going because places create their own culture based on their own history. People make perceptions based on their upbringings and the value system of the people they respect. Needs, wants, and desires all develop and take form in the environment in which we grow up, creating the root from which we grow.
The difficulty to which we face unearthing the secrets of the past and deciphering our present is made difficult by the “impossibility of objective analysis. Like all human beings, historians live in a particular time and place, and their views of both current and past events are influenced in innumerable conscious and unconscious ways by their own experience within their own culture. Historians may believe they’re being objective, but their own views of what is right and wrong, what is civilized and uncivilized, what is important and unimportant and the like, will strongly influence the ways in which they interpret events.” (page 283)
“Another reason for the difficulty in producing reliable interpretations of history is its complexity. For new historicists, history cannot be understood simply as a linear progression of events. At any given point in history, any given culture may be progressing in some areas and regressing in others. And any two historians may disagree about what constitutes progress and what doesn’t for these matters are terms of definition. (283)”.
The third and final set of theory that I chose was that of Feminist Criticism.
“Traditional gender roles cast men as rational, strong, protective, and decisive; they cast women as emotional (irrational), weak, nurturing, and submissive” (pg. 85). Christopher doesn’t identify with traditional gender roles as he does not identify with any roles. He proceeds forward through his own sense of right or wrong, regardless of what is appropriate for his gender. A person like Christopher is not compelled by society to fit himself within the roles of gender, and their accompanying behaviors. Christopher is also not compelled to exclude himself from what may be seen as masculine or feminine behaviors. He can be one, both, or move from one to another as he pleases. He is not restrained by gender. He is his own gender.
Like Christopher we are blind and wanderers through our environments, subject to the whims of the self-centered people who populate it, and our own ignorant, unconscious, biologically based reactions that keep us in a cycle of action and reaction.
It appears that Christopher doesn’t have or doesn’t need the defenses that non-autistic people need.
1) Selective perception (“hearing and seeing only what we feel we can handle”)(Tyson pg. 15).
Christopher insists on solving the crime as it appears as a puzzle to him, like a mathematical problem which has a logical and orderly conclusion if only one can figure out the system to solve it. (Haddon pg 5) Most people would have been overwhelmed by this incident, much less trying to involve themselves in the crime of a neighbor’s dog being killed. Christopher does not seem to have a problem with selective perception because he sees everything, whether it is mathematics or the dog’s murder, as data or information to make sense of.
2) Selective memory (“modifying our memories so that we don’t feel overwhelmed by them or forgetting painful events entirely”)(Tyson pg. 15).
The boy Christopher, discovers the dead dog and isn’t scared like other children, he is detached and details the scene as calmly as he was watching anything else. He relates the facts like a police officer, like the time (7 minutes after midnight) and the layout of the crime scene (Haddon pg 1). Instead of being frightened by the unusual event of coming upon a dog that has been impaled with a garden fork, this gruesome scene becomes a thing of curiosity for him. He can remember every single detail because it does not make him uncomfortable in the least.
3) Denial (“believing that the problem doesn’t exist or the unpleasant incident never happened”)(Tyson pg. 15).
When Christopher first finds out about the death of his mother, it does not seem to have much of an effect on him, as it would have on the non-autistic person. To Christopher it is just another incident in his life. He tries to make sense of the circumstances of his mother’s heart attack, whether it was an aneurism or an embolism by trying to match her symptoms to the criteria of the two types of heart attack. HE does not appear to suffer through grief, and its accompanying stages, one of which is denial. (Haddon pg 28).
4) Avoidance (“staying away from people or situations that are liable to make us anxious by stirring up some unconscious- i.e., repressed—experience or emotion”)(Tyson pg. 15).
Instead of being frightened or intimidated by the experience going to jail like the non-autistic person would be, Christopher can clearly answer the officers questions and follow their directions to remove his shoe laces and empty his pockets. To him this experience is just another “story” when he is placed in a cell and thinks about escaping. (Haddon pg 12-16).
5) Displacement (the need to inflict pain on someone or something that is “less threatening” than what caused the original pain we are trying to get revenge for)(Tyson pg. 15).
Christopher hits the officer when the officer attempts to raise him from the grass. Most people wouldn’t dare to think about hitting a police officer, when this happens in society it is often because the person is in an emotional state, and/or intoxicated as well. In Christopher’s mind it is perfectly acceptable to hit anyone if they put their hands on you and you don’t want them to. (Haddon pg 8). To most people the police represent power, and the attempt to inflict pain upon them is a serious offence. To Christopher, the police officer is just another person in uniform, one who he perceived as trying to hurt him, and so Christopher retaliates without fear. He is not threatened by the authority of the police officer, nor fear the consequences of his actions.
Haddon, Mark. The Curious Incident of the Dog in Night-Time. Vintage Books. 2003.
Tyson, Lois. Critical Theory Today: a User-friendly Guide. New York: Routledge, 2006.>
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