Christopher's Philosophy

I have been struggling to get a handle on the exact life philosophy that Christopher seems to live by.  In trying to reach a conclusion I have started with the place where Haddon’s novel gets its name.  This source is two-fold.  While it does deal with the actual context of the story, and the death of Christopher’s neighbor’s dog, it also draws some inspiration from the following quote:

‘Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?’

‘To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.’

‘The dog did nothing in the night-time.’

‘That was the curious incident,’ remarked Sherlock Holmes.

                                                ‘Silver Blaze’ by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Utilizing that, in combination with George and Jonathan Lewis’s critical research article found here: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4614734 , I have determined that much of what Christopher holds to be true stems from the significance that he gives to practically every event.  Each thing that occurs in his life holds importance until he is either told that it shouldn’t or he logically figures out a reason why it shouldn’t hold importance.  For instance, he carries around pictures of faces displaying a variety of different emotions thinking that doing that is significant.  When he stumbles upon a face external to those he carries with him, however, and fails to recognize it he throws away the faces he previously carried.  His inability to benefit from them discredited his initial reasoning for carrying them in the first place.  In this manner, the “non-occurrence” of events is just as important as the occurrence of events. 

A perfect textual example of this philosophy playing out is the way in which Christopher describes what prime numbers are.  Instead of just saying that a prime number is only divisible by one and itself he defines it according to a process; i.e. when you take away multiples of 2, and then multiples of 3, etc. you will then have a prime number.  This stripping away of things in order to reach an end result instead of just defining the object in and of itself shows that Christopher views things as having contextual purpose instead of existing as just a sole artifact.

This relates back to my previous musings about the complexity of human emotions.  The context of human being is what creates the complexities of that being—if there existed no outside factors the being would not have the emotional backdrop that makes it complex.  Because of this, Christopher’s quote rings incredibly true with me:  “I think prime numbers are like life.  They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them” (page 12).