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Chapter 19
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Growing Up
Trust
Truth, Love, and Safety
Logic vs. Emotion
Perspective and the Absurdity of the World
Summary
Analysis
At the police station, Christopher has to empty his pockets of a number of items, including a Swiss Army Knife. The police want to take his watch, but let him keep it when he screams at them. He gives the police his father’s phone number, and they put him in a jail cell.
The fact that Christopher puts up a fight only about his watch shows the extent to which precision governs his life. He often gives the exact time that something happened, and knowing the time helps him feel secure in the workings of the world.
Themes
Christopher rather likes the cell, a perfect two-meter cube. He begins to figure out how he might escape if he were in a story, and decides that on a sunny day, he would use his glasses to focus the light and start a fire. When the police took him out of the cell, he would escape.
Again, Christopher demonstrates his difference by his calm response to being jailed, something that might cause other people much more concern. His logic takes over as he measures the cell and figures out his imagined escape.
Themes
Christopher wonders whether Mrs. Shears has told the police that he killed Wellington, and if she’ll go to prison for telling this lie, which he thinks would be classified as slander.
Christopher’s sense of truth is so inflexible that he truly thinks Mrs. Shears might get in trouble with the law for an understandable misconception about Christopher’s role in Wellington’s death.
Themes
