stab your circumstance with a pitchfork

Chapter 11: More Than It’s Gonna Hurt You: Concerning Violence

                This chapter seemed to me to be very philosophical, mostly because violence is this very human thing that we’re constantly trying to understand and combat. Therefore, analyzing violence often leads us to analyze bigger ideas about what it means to be human. Violence is about an intimate connection; it’s a connection from one individual to another or from an individual to his circumstance. It brings up questions about the extent to which people and other things outside our personal sphere can affect us and how we can affect them. Violence is the one concrete way we can hurt someone and see the physical results of the pain we’ve inflicted. It’s a struggle for control in the basest form. Any other struggle is intangible and its results are unpredictable, but physical harm leaves irreversible damage.

                The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime is one book that I can think of in which violence plays a big part, affecting the characters and plot in an irreversible way. To start, the entire plot of the book is the result of a violent act- the murder of Wellington, the dog. Christopher, who is assumed to have some form of autism, sets it upon himself to solve Wellington’s murder. This murder is raw and bloody. This violence is not disguised or softened in any way; it is a dead dog with a pitchfork sticking out of it. Christopher finds it in the yard. Animal violence especially represents the extent of human power over other things. Wellington was an innocent victim, defenseless, but nonetheless alive and valued by someone. His murder represents man’s attempt to grasp reality by feeling powerful and in control of something. Christopher’s father ends up being revealed as the killer. He was having an affair with the owner of the dog and they got into an argument, so his exhibition of power was to kill the dog.

                Violence is a character attribute; it says something about one’s personality. Everyone has different coping mechanisms, and violence is an external one that can most directly impact others. Christopher’s father is known in the book to abuse Christopher when he gets out of control. Christopher’s autistic behavior is hard to understand and almost impossible to minimize. The father’s behavior is marked by rash actions taken when his circumstance is tragic and encompassing. Violence is an attempt to make a tangible response to the problems that he feels imprisoned by but cannot grasp. It represents the power of circumstance and our futile attempts to change what we cannot.