Three of the principal themes in Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime relate to truth, honesty, and love. These are all interconnected within Christopher’s mind and his relationship with each is complicated. He says of his father that ‘he always tells me the truth, which means that he loves me.’ For Christopher, at least initially, truth and honesty are equivalent to love. When he finds out that his father has lied to him about the death of his mother and about the death of Wellington, he becomes extremely upset. It turns his world upside down and makes him believes that his father does not love him and that he cannot live at home anymore. It is this conflict that begins his adventure.
Over the course of the novel, Christopher shows that his concept of truth and falsity is not so black and white. He acknowledges that things like metaphor and similes, ‘white lies,’ slander, and even some of his own words fall somewhere between the true and the false. At one point he states that ‘I don’t tell lies,’ and at another admits that he ‘told a lie’ when claiming that he could not tell jokes. He has difficulty reconciling with his father at the end of the novel, feeling that his father betrayed him and their mutual trust. Nonetheless, it seems that he has learned a thing or two about honesty during his journey ‘ that sometimes people tell lies or hide the truth because they do not want to hurt one another ‘ and this allows a degree of flexibility in his relationship with his father.
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"The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime Themes".
At first glance, Christopher’s mind is one that sees in black and white ‘ true and false, sense and nonsense, safe and unsafe, love and not love ‘ and allows no room for gray areas. His orderly and logical mind has little tolerance for uncertainty or ambiguity. Nonetheless, we notice during his journey that he can see these distinctions a little more than he likes to let on. While his definition of love includes taking care of someone and telling them the truth, he is able to accept both his father and mother by the end of his story, even though each failed him in one of these ways. He can love them both, deal with change, and move forward, albeit cautiously.
