The Curious Incident of Ambiguity

Eight years ago, when I first met Siobhan, she showed me this picture

: ( 

and I knew that it meant "sad," which is what I felt when I found the dead dog.

Then she showed me this picture 

: )

and I knew that it meant “happy,” like when I’m reading about the Apollo space missions…Then she drew some other pictures

: /  >: )   :o 

But I was unable to say what these meant…

I like dogs. You always know what a dog is thinking. It has four moods. Happy, sad, cross and concentrating. Also, dogs are faithful and they do not tell lies because they cannot talk.

I love The curious incident of the dog in the night-time so far, I think it’s one of the best readings we’ve had. What interested me most in the novel is the way it portrays an Autistic child and the way his challenges in communication are presented. While reading through the preceding excerpt, what struck me was that Christopher despises ambiguity. Throughout the novel, he is brutally honest, unable to fathom being anything else. As such, it is natural that he would hate language, that he would hate communication. By its nature, language is arbitrary, it is ambiguous and requires an active imagination; however, an individual that is overly empirical,one that can only see what is and nothing else can’t understand the nature of language to its fullest. But I think this brings up an interesting point: Chistopher is able to adapt to use language at its most basic sense, but is not able comprehend the use of metaphors and symbolism. In many ways though, what Christopher points to is the ambiguity in language, and the ambiguity in interpretation. We go through such great lengths in trying to interpret, but if everyone was like Christopher, and simply said what they meant instead of creating ambiguity through metaphors and such, wouldn’t communication be incredibly easier? To be honest, don’t imaginations, fantasies and such just detract from the truth?