Final Paper Brainstorming

Curious Incident:

• All facts about father come from Christopher
• Christopher doesn’t seem to really care about other people’s emotions, so we have to make a lot of inferences
• Very separated from all of the other characters

Persuasion:

• All facts about Anne come from the characters around her
• Author doesn’t offer any explicit details about anne, past the fact that she is considered plain, and we learn about her from her experiences
• other characters all represent a specific idea
• walter=vanity
• mary=irritating
• anne is shown as being patient
• FFree Indirect Discourse (FID) – allows Austen to blend consciousnesses in the novel
• All other characters are almost a “part” of the main character

Thesis:

• So what is the connections
• Different writing styles
• Curious incident = 1^st person
• Reliable?
• Persuasion = 3^rd 
• What does this difference do for the author’s representation of the characters
•  Both go about their conveying the main character in completely different ways
• Yet we still feel like we have a very firm grasp of both anne and christopher’s father by the end of the book
• ·         Answer: empathy
  o   In both novels, the author relies on the reader’s ability to empathize with the characters of the story in order for their character developments to be conveyed.
  o   Even though both novels approach this task from completely different ends of the spectrum, they both are able to achieve the feat of characterization through this idea of reader empathy
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·         Thesis: While Austen relies on the clear depiction of secondary characters to express the characterization of the protagonist, Anne, in Persuasion, Haddon takes a different approach and relies on the social interactions of the main character, Christopher, in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, to highlight details about the secondary characters, namely Christopher’s father. The power behind these two approaches to characterization is reliance on reader empathy. By developing scenarios that cause readers to feel empathy for the main character, these authors allow one to make personal connections to the characters on the basis of human experience with emotion, social interaction, and personal conflict. Even though Austen and Haddon approach characterization of Anne and Christopher’s father from completely different ends of the spectrum, both are able to successfully and effectively paint a picture of their respective characters by relying on these specific factors of reader empathy.

·         Social Interaction:

o   Anne

§  Mary representing irritation -> shows Anne’s patience

§  Walter (Father) represents vanity -> shows Anne’s modesty

§  Audience relates to the situation of finding a loved one annoying, but being forced to put up with it because you care for them

§  Audience relates to the situation of disapproval from a parent, and realizes that Anne’s reaction takes a great deal of stamina -> expresses her modesty

o   Christopher’s father

§  Breathing through nose -> Christopher doesn’t understand what this means

·         but readers do and pick up on this, despite Christopher’s inability

·         Personal Conflict:

o   Anne

§  Captain Wentworth -> shows Anne’s humility

§  Audience relates to the struggle of being in love with someone who does not love you back, and the fact that Anne hides this so well and respects the relationship between Wentworth and Louisa shows a great deal of humility

o   Christopher’s father

§  becomes clear that Christopher’s mother left her father because she could not deal with Christopher’s unpredictable behavior anymore -> Christopher speaks of this without seeming to care. In fact, he still ventures out and seeks his mother, despite the fact that his father is the one who has cared for him for all these years

·         audience sees the personal conflict of the father, and the fact that he loves his son. Even though he killed Wellington, this is easily brushed aside by the audience who see the true sacrifice that christopher’s father has made, while Christopher is hung up on the fact that his father committed a crime, and is unable to understand why this is not the most important thing

·         -> can tie into the next idea of emotion from here…

·         Emotion:

o   Anne

§  Hysteria and emotion result from other characters when Louisa falls and hits her head, knocking her unconscious -> demonstrates Anne’s level-headedness and ability to be rational in a emotionally unstable situation

·         Audience relates to the fact that emotional situations can prevent one from thinking clearly

o   Christopher’s father

§  Christopher’s inability to recognize human emotions in other characters

§  Christopher doesn’t realize that his father’s silence actually expresses his anger

·         In the car on the way home from the police station

·         When he finds the book

·         Audience relates to this feeling of anger, potentially even imagining a time where they were so angry they were silent

Attention "Deficit"? Or Attention "Disruption"?

Attention: it’s one of the most debated topics in psychological research, yet it is arguably impossible to find an environment where it is absent. Even in this instance, your body is not only paying attention to the words on this page, but it is also paying attention to the temperature of the room, the oxygen levels of the air, and the ground beneath you. However, these are not directed forms of attention. Directed attention occurs when you focus on something, such as learning Spanish or watching Family Guy. But how do people specifically do this? And more interestingly, why do some people show deficits and differences in terms of how they pay attention, and how much attention they give, to certain things? This question has been partially answered with the establishment of certain disorders such as attention deficit disorder and attention hyperactive deficit disorder. In Frank McCormick’s poem, “Attention Deficit Disorder”, he tries to capture the very essence of the disorder. One thing that I want to highlight in this post is the fact that I believe that the naming for ADD is incredibly inaccurate, and I believe that McCormick may agree with me. His poem starts out as follows:

I guess I paid attention to the wrong things:/

the creamy empty space between the words,/

the silent edges of the textbook illustration,/

the worn lines along my teacher’s thick brown neck./

Still, I could re-draw them in my sleep.

This first stanza of the poem highlights a very interesting, important feature of ADD, in my opinion. This is the fact that the word “deficit” can be very deceiving and almost untruthful about the overall attention state of those who have ADD. People with ADD do not suffer from a strict deficit of attention, per say. From this stanza, I would say that McCormick argues that it is more of an altercation or reallocation of attention. The narrator says “I guess I paid attention to the wrong things”. So it does not seem like he does not pay attention, but rather that he believes his attention was on things aside from what he was specifically supposed to be paying attention to. It seems safe to assume the narrator is a school student. He goes on to refer to the “creamy empty space between the words” and the “silent edges of the textbook illustration”. It seems as if the narrator is paying attention to his school book, but not what normal people without ADD would most likely pay attention to. Most of us don’t spend time focusing our attention on the white space between the text, or the edges of pictures, but this caught the narrator’s eye for some reason. The most interesting line from this stanza, however, is the last one. He states that he could draw the “worn lines along my teacher’s thick brown neck…in my sleep”. No one would argue that the wrinkles on the teacher’s neck is a very particular detail. To pick up on such a feature requires extreme attention. But hold on….this is has attention deficit  disorder. Is he truly capable of such detailed memory for something when he was clearly not paying attention to the lecture material. Well, it seems that McCormick would argue “Yes,” and I would have to agree. I believe that the name Attention Deficit Disorder is extremely deceiving, and it makes you wonder if the disorder deserves a more fitting name, such as Attention Distribution Disorder.

Furthermore, I believe that N. Katherine Hayles has some very interesting contributions to this argument in her paper, “Hyper and Deep Attention: The Generational Divide in Cognitive Modes”. In this paper, Hayles addresses the ideas of deep attention and hyper attention. She states that “deep attention is superb for solving complex problems represented in a single medium, but it comes at the price of environmental alertness and flexibility of response” (p. 188) This seems to relate perfectly to the situation in McCormick’s poem, “Attention Deficit Disorder”, where the narrator says he is able to remember the teacher’s neck lines. In this situation, the narrator’s deep attention was focused on the teacher’s neck, and he was oblivious to the environment around him. Hayles also states that “hyper attention excels at negotiating rapidly changing environments in which multiple foci compete for attention; its disadvantage is impatience with focusing for long periods on a noninteractive object such as a Victorian novel or complicated math problem” (p. 188). This highlights the narrator’s inability to pay attention to the words on the page of his textbook. However, the teacher, who was a much more interactive object to hold the narrator’s attention, became the object of focus, and the vivid memory of the neck lines was the result. This displays the very intriguing allocation of attention that, I would argue, is in no way a deficit, but more of a disruption.

The Thoughts of a Closed Mind

If nothing else, I have learned this semester that writing is one of, if not the most, effective way to convey one’s thoughts. Not only does it allow creativity, but it also gives a writer a way to be freely expressive and completely passionate about what they are trying to convey, with no fear. I am not trying to suggest that writers “hide” behind their words. I see the words on the page as more of a tool. They are a device for conveying an idea. And by conveying that idea through the ink on a page, rather than simply by speaking the idea to a listener, the idea itself becomes sort of its own being. It becomes a separate entity from the writer. Suddenly a brilliant thought turns in to something concrete. It can be preserved this way. Just like Keats expressed in his poem “When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be”, there is a fear that our thoughts are not permanent, and that they can be lost. Writing gives us a way to preserve these thoughts, whether for ourselves or in order to share with others. In the same way that I personally enjoy writing for this reason, I also love reading for the same reason. Reading the work of another allows me to dive into their thoughts, and sometimes even maybe get a better grasp of what exactly their thoughts were on a matter than if they were to try to describe them to me in person. After reading “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime”, by Mark Haddon, I can say I was not only completely engrossed in the novel as I read, but that I was also constantly fascinated by the mind of the author.

            In this novel, it is immediately obvious that this is not an ordinary fiction novel (although I don’t know that it is fair to say that there is an “ordinary” fiction novel). The diction was like nothing I have read before. While I have not read this novel before, I did know a little background on the novel. I knew the narrator of the novel has Autism, so I was very intrigued to see what the book would be like. I don’t know what my expectations were (it is hard to look back now after reading the book), but I can safely say whatever I expected, I was far off. The mind of this narrator is purely amazing. I have always had a keen interest in Autism and actually almost joined a lab working with people with Autism instead of the lab I currently work in. However, I think I would have not enjoyed the book nearly as much had I done so. Every sentence was a mystery. Every sentence was unpredictable. Yet not. It was as if with every word, I garnered a slightly better understanding of the mind of one who had no desire to open up to anyone.

            According to the secondary reading from the Medical Encyclopedia, Autism “affects the brain’s normal development of social and communication skills.” Its causes remain unknown. It has no cure, and while theories have been made about the cause (these include theories involving diet, mercury poisoning, vaccine sensitivity, etc.), none have been proven. Essentially these children have mind of mystery. The most interesting part is the fact that one of the biggest symptoms and signs of autism is a lack of social skills and a tendency to be closed off to the world. Many kids with autism will even treat other people more as objects. They have a very hard time understanding feelings. I found the pictures of facial expressions that the narrator included, which he was taught in order to  help him try to understand feelings, pointed to this. As the book progresses, it is obvious that the narrator  suffers from Autism. “I could see him touching me, like I was watching a film of what was happening in the room, but I could hardly feel his hand at all. It was just like the wind blowing against me” (p. 114). This exhibits one of the main characteristics of Autism, which is the inability to process other’s feelings and to relate to people in a social way. Furthermore, this quote also displays the narrator’s general intelligence. He is by no means unintelligent. In fact, the fact that he knows every prime number up to 7,057 would strongly suggest otherwise. But why is this Autistic individual, who clearly does not have what we would consider to be a “normal” grasp of human communication and general social interaction, want to write a novel? And furthermore, what can we learn from it?

            I believe that this novel offers an exceptional view on Autism, and it allows people who do not have a distinct understanding of Autism to reach in to the mind of a person who suffers from the disorder. We learn from experience, and this novel only gets me more curious about the inter workings of the mind of individuals with Autism. How do they react to situations differently than people without Autism? What is going through their mind as they go about life in general? How does their thought process unfold when they are solving a problem, even as simple as something like tying your shoes? Haddon offers a very interesting take on the answers to these questions.