The Curious Incident of the Dog In the Night-Time

Right from the title, the reader can understand that the text is about a dog and some mysterious events that involve him. It can be noticed that the word dog is capitalized; this is very unusual considering that it is a common name. Probably, there are some specific reasons for this choice which the intelligent reader can understand in the following lines. After an accurate reading, the reader can find out the name of the dog, Wellington. This name probably refers to Arthur Wellesley who was the 1st Duke of Wellington. This character was very important in the English history because he defeated Napoleon in Waterloo’s battle.

First of all, the text can be divided into four parts. Let’s start analysing the first part: from line 1 to line 6. The first sequence is packed with details. This choice allows to the reader to understand the intention of the narrator: he/she wants the reader to image the scene as he/she was present. From the sentence “It looked as if it was running on its side, the way dogs  run when they think they are chasing a cat in a dream” the narrator seems to be impassioned about dogs, since he/she knows they are able to dream. This part, besides including lots of details and information about the narrator, conveys the idea of cruelty because of the insistence of the narrator to describe the dog’s body and therefore his/her inquisitive attitude.

The aim of the second sequence is to present the case and make some conjectures about what could have happened to the dog. The narrator uses a double effect: he conveys a realistic impression of the circumstances and alerts the reader using a grammatical expedient, an example is the transition from the third person narrative to the first one.

The third sequence is about the dog’s owner, Mrs Shears. The narrator still includes lots of details about the dog’s owner and where she lives. To keep the reader’s attention high, the narrator uses another grammatical expedient: he suddenly talks as if he was with somebody else using the pronoun ‘our’.

In the last sequence, the narrator describes the dog before his death. He provides lots of details about his physical appearance, which make the intelligence reader understand that Mrs Shears was not taking much care of her pet. The are three main reasons that justify such opinion: firstly, Mrs Shears is not the first person to realise that her dog was dead. Secondly, the dog was not particularly groomed; for example it is mentioned that there was a big poodle without hairstyle. Thirdly, Wellington was probably ill since his skin was very pale and compared to the colour of a chicken.

In conclusion, even though this text provided a very little part of the novel and therefore it does not reveal the dog’s murderer, it provided information at a very detailed level. Right from the first line, it is clear that the narrator has an inquisitive and mysterious attitude which combined with the use of very short and focused sentences, make sure that concepts stick to the reader’s mind.