The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by SparkNotes

Author:SparkNotes [SparkNotes]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapters 157-163

Summary: Chapter 157

On Monday evening, Father goes out to fix a flooded cellar, so Christopher sneaks into Father’s room. He counts 43 letters addressed to him in the same handwriting. The first letter describes a memory that Mother has of Christopher playing with a wooden train set she bought him for Christmas. Christopher made timetables for all of the train lines. Spelling errors occur throughout the letter, like “woodden” and “timetabel.” At the bottom it is signed “Love, Your Mum.”

In the next letter, Mother explains why she left the family. She recounts a time that Christopher had a fit in a crowded store while she was Christmas shopping. Christopher became frightened by the number of people in the store, and when Mother tried to move him he started screaming and broke two mixers by knocking them off a nearby shelf. Then he wet himself. He wouldn’t stop screaming and they had to walk home because Mother knew he wouldn’t want to get on a crowded bus. At home, Mother cried to Father, who then became angry with her for being selfish. She describes how she began to feel very lonely and argue with Father a lot. Then she started spending a lot of time with Roger. Roger said he didn’t love Eileen anymore and asked Mother to leave Father for him.

One evening at supper Christopher threw a cutting board, which broke her toes. She had to go to the hospital and couldn’t walk for a month. Afterward, Father blamed her for losing her temper. While she recovered, she saw how much more calmly Christopher acted around Father than with her. She decided Christopher and Father would be better off without her in the house and moved in with Roger in London. Father was so angry and hurt by her abandonment that he forbade her from calling Christopher or coming to visit. She ends the letter by asking Christopher to please write her back.

In the next letter, Mother writes about her new job as a secretary in a real estate office. She asks if he received the present she sent. In a fourth letter, Mother talks about going to the dentist with Christopher. Christopher stops reading because he feels sick. He realizes that Mother didn’t have a heart attack and that Father has been lying to him. He curls into a ball on the bed and passes out. When he wakes up it is dark outside. He has vomited all over. Father comes into the room, but to Christopher his voice sounds small and distant. Father sees the letters and begins to cry. When Father touches Christopher to guide him to the bath it does not hurt like it usually does.

Summary: Chapter 163

Christopher recounts an exercise that Julie, his first teacher at school, had him perform when he was young. In the exercise, Julie showed him a tube of Smarties candy and asked him to guess what was inside. When he guessed Smarties, Julie revealed that the tube contained a little red pencil.

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