Analysis of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

First of all, we should consider the title of the novel: it presents the adjective “curious” referred to the word “incident”; this attribution is quite unusual, but it makes the reader wonder about what happened to the dog. Also, the night setting creates more mystery, because the night is often connected to evil situations, crimes and more... so the reader may expect to read an horror or a detective story.

The layout is arranged like an ordinary prose, indeed the text comes from a famous novel very popular in the U.K.

As soon as we start to read we can figure it out that is the incipit of the novel by the presentation of the setting and the characters, utmost the meaning happening. Since the first sentence, we can highlight a pathological accuracy: an example is “7 minutes after midnight”.

Moving on it appears the scene of the dog lying on the grass in front of the Mrs. Shears' house. We don't know who is the narrator, if it is external, internal, a person or a dog. We could consider the last supposition because it seems that the storyteller knows what dogs think.

Before saying the dog was dead are made some hypothesis to force the reader to think of the dog condition and it creates expectation to find out the truth. That comes after to create suspense and it is expressed in a very short sentence, which has the aim to stick into the reader's mind.
The scene depicted by the narrator is harsh, and what makes it more horrible is again the morbose description: the dog was found with a sticking garden fork ( a garden tool that makes the intelligent reader imagine that the murder might be a gardener or someone that knows Mrs. Shears' house very well).

Here the person narrating changes and becomes a first person that starts investigating on the murder, we may deduce by the supposition made on the dog corpse, but it is not sure of the fact.
We understand the narrator and now meaning character is a person by the verb to knee, knelt, knelt used to express a person that goes down on knees. Also, we can discover that the meaning character loves animals by the way he or she behaves: he knees beside the dog and pets it with no worries of violating private property.
Finally, it describes the dog: it is called Wellington ( probably named after the Duke of Wellington, hero in the battle of Waterloo against Napoleon and also Britain Prime Minister), it is a big poodle with black curly fur and underneath yellow pale skin. Wellington is the contrary of the ordinary poodle known as short, with white and hairstyled fur usually is belonged by a hysterical lady in our stereotyped vision of life.
Last but not least, the excerpt ends with a narrator's inquisitive attitude: he makes two indirect questions that drive him to look for the culprit and the motive for all the novel.