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
After Judy’s death, one of the teachers at school told him his mother was in heaven. However, Christopher doesn’t believe in heaven. Reverend Peters, a churchman at school, once told him that heaven wasn’t anywhere in the universe, and Christopher replied that the only way to get outside the universe might be to go through a black hole, but heaven can’t be through a black hole. He thinks that people only believe in heaven because they don’t like death.
Christopher’s logical mind makes itself known in this situation. He doesn’t hesitate to challenge Reverend Peters on questions of religion, because he can’t stand people believing in ideas that he knows logically and factually cannot be true. The simple science of his argument is surprisingly effective, and he perceives a good reason why people might delude themselves about heaven.
Themes
In fact, Christopher says, death simply means that a person’s body rots and becomes part of the earth. However, Christopher’s mother was cremated, so now he imagines the particles of her body floating in the air all over the world.
Christopher has no sentimental ideas about death or about his mother. He faces the hard facts, and yet he still manages to get comfort out of them with his image of his mother’s ashes traveling the world.
Themes
