Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time: Play vs. Novel

     In the book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon an autistic boy named Christopher discovers the world and learns new things on his way to try to take on his A-level math exam, however in the play version by Simon Stephens brings the characters to life.The similarities and in the play and novel versions are seen by the differences in words, characters and all around way of reading and seeing it.

    The play version of Curious Incident is definitely a more interesting read as it incorporates actual actions and music and lighting arrangements. In the play version it takes out portions of storyline to make it shorter and slightly changes the dialogue so it is in first person. In the novel, words are less alive than in the play version but there is more storyline and things are a little bit more specific in detail than the play version. I like the play version better just because I felt like it was more first person, if the novel would have been first person it would have been brilliant but the third-person aspect of the novel killed it for me, it was better told in a first person format. The novel and play are similar and different in many ways.

   The novel and play version are similar in storyline, but other than that they have many differences. They differ because the play version takes the words and brings them to life, the play puts a completely different perspective on the story with a very well-written first person perspective of how Christopher's life is. The novel does a decent job of describing Christopher’s condition and what his life is like but not as good as the play which provides actions and movements and directions to the characters to help illustrate what Christopher’s life is like. Also the play is a lot shorter then the book most likely because it has to fit in to a time slot and the book can basically go into more detail about everything which is one of the things I like about the book, the detail about all the characters and things in the book.

   The similarities and in the play and novel versions are seen by the differences in words, characters and all around way of reading and seeing it. The similarities and differences sort of come together to put two different perspectives on the story, first and third-person perspectives, one version provides more detail to back the more third-person approach and one pays more attention to effects and movements and directions to fit the more first-person approach. In closing, both approaches provide interesting insight into the storyline and what it's like to be in Christopher’s situation