Paul 1

Trevor Paul

Mrs. Stanford

AP English Language

14 May 2021

Perceptions Of Autism In Pop Culture

Autism and Aspergers have been a hot topic of debate as well as understanding in the last

couple of decades. Knowing or encountering someone with autism is almost a universal

experience for many people, especially in the US and other western countries where mental

illness research and understanding has come a long way in recent decades. Included in a lot of

this discussion is the book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. This book by

Mark Haddon follows Christopher Boone in his coming to reality with the world around him and

as he perceives it with autism. Following this book’s release, there was also a Broadway show

that was published and performed hundreds of times between 2012 and 2016. These two

mediums of the same work tell the same story but in slightly different ways which affect the way

that the reader or audience may perceive its primary message, the perspective of someone

afflicted with autism and how the story changes because of this. Most of this change is in how

the live performance focuses on a small space that remains the same for the entire show, only

changing slightly throughout. Secondly, the play’s choice to use one of the characters, Siobhan,

as the narrator through the duration of the play. These changes make a large difference between it

and the book which are important to analyze and review in order to understand the decisions that

brought these changes and what they change about the story itself.

The first major change that the play made which departed itself from the book was that

the entire performance is in a single space which doesn’t move or change hardly at all. When
 Paul 2

picturing an image in a book, it is common for spaces to be left blank to be filled in by the

reader’s own imagination, however, as demonstrated in the play this is not the way that it is

intended to be in the book. In the original broadway production of the play it is a large cube with

walls, floors, and ceilings that can change and project images based on what Christopher himself

sees. However, the main premise of this play is not that it is a cube but just a static space that

hardly changes around him, including things like a platform or some moveable scaffolding. The

point of these static spaces is to show the world from Christopher’s perspective and how he

views the encounters with the only props being those most important in his eyes, like the door

frame of a house. This change signifies a visual view of the world from Christopher’s

perspective which better encapsulates it than the book which states the same details as the movie

but a reader’s mind then fills in the rest as if it was from their own perspective. Telling the story

from this single room forces Christopher’s perspective on the audience rather than the other way

around and allows for a better and more personal understanding of Christopher’s world and

everything that goes on in it. This makes a connection between Christopher and the audience that

cannot be made by the book and further the audience's understanding of the subject and someone

of the trials and tribulations that Christopher goes through. This connection further brings the

audience to learn about Christopher and his world with autism as well as how people and kids

deal with it themselves. Personal connections being made like this push the audience to learn and

understand autism much more than just reading about it, furthering the push for understanding

autism in the world much better than the book does.

The second major difference is how the live performance is narrated. When someone

often thinks of their own inner dialogue or consciousness, they will likely think of their own

voice in their head and when reading a book in which the narrator is the consciousness of the
 Paul 3

main character often they think of it as his voice. This is another difference that sets Christopher

and others with autism apart and it is important to understand that that may be the case for many

people. In the book it is implied that the narration of all of Christopher’s inner thoughts was

Christopher himself. In the live performance it is portrayed that Siobhan, one of Christopher’s

teachers, narrates Christopher’s inner thoughts and dialogue. This difference also shows and

relates to the audience another effect of autism and how someone like Christopher might think.

With the book letting it seem as though it was just Christopher’s inner monologue that was

narrating the book, it seemed as though it was normal and his dialogue was similar to the

reader’s. The play however, shows the audience that this is not the case. That in his own mind, it

is Siobhan that is narrating everything and thinking for him. This difference shows further how

much different his thinking process is than from someone unaffected by autism and allows for

further insight by the audience to further understand him. Understanding him is one step along

the way to being able to allow him to enter society as normal and be included with every single

one of his peers instead of sticking out as he is portrayed to in the book.

Autism is still a very important topic to be talked about and understood by everybody as

all will likely have some experience with it at some point in their lives. Understanding it can

make the world a better place for all and allow people afflicted with it to be able to live their

lives normally without having a burden on their shoulders. This is what the play of The Curious

Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time does differently from the book. The play shows it truly

from Christopher’s perspective and forces it upon the audience to recognize by showing the

whole story in a single space with sparse props, just as Christopher would think of an area, and

by showing his monologue is actually told by his teacher, Siobhan, rather than himself inside of

his own head. These differences make the live-action play significantly better at portraying these
 Paul 4

aspects of Christopher’s character and the whole point of the book. Understanding the message is

the whole reason to read something to begin with and the play illustrates it further than the book

possibly can.
 Paul 5

Sources Cited

Haddon, Mark, et al. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time: the Play. Bloomsbury

Publishing Plc, 2013.

Haddon, Mark. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Vintage Contemporaries,

2003.