Author's note: Earlier this school year, I took part in a literature group discussing the book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Our conversation shifted to a philosophical discussion debating the differences between logic and emotion and the relationship with love. My writing is a response to Madeline's.
“This makes us ponder how anyone could possibly live without emotion. My conclusion? It is impossible; emotion brings us closer to the things that make life worth living.” The thesis statement written by Madeline portrays her belief of the perceived disillusion of Christopher, a boy with autism. Emotion certainly has its place in abstract feelings and love, but stating that he lacks genuine empathy and emotion is unequivocally wrong. Christopher has emotions, but what he feels is emotion through logic.
Christopher understands emotions. He just sees emotions through a logical eye. For the sake of this argument, we will look at one of the most powerful emotions – love. Love has multiple definitions. Love can be used to describe unconditional feelings toward a spouse or a child I love my wife, to describe the joy of participating in a sport or an activity I love playing and watching football, to describe the enjoyment of food I love Culver’s double butterburger cheese. However, his definition of the word differs from all these definitions.
Christopher uses logic as a lens to understand emotion. Can someone describe a relationship with a spouse as companionship, as comfort, and as support systems while honestly saying they are living without love? Just because the relationship is solely logical and may not include emotion does not mean that the logical person could care less if the relationship ends.
Although Christopher’s autism makes it appear as though he does not understand emotion, he just does not view emotion in the same light as you or me. Christopher did not want the dog to die. Does this mean he loved the dog? To you and me, no. However, using Christopher’s definition of love and Christopher’s mind, losing the dog left a void in his heart. He loved that dog.
Without reading Madaline's post, I was able to tell that your opinion is obviously much different from hers. I think that i agree with your opinion more because i don't believe that people with autism lack emotion it's their lack for understanding emotion.
ReplyDeleteI like that you posted your potentially controversial opinion. I enjoyed how you laid out your idea in as logical a way as possible. With that said, I must say I quite disagree. If you are allowing Christopher to define for himself what love is, as you do in your conclusion, than he may as well declare the color green to be love, and therefore only love green things for the sake of the green-ness. He does associate colors with feelings, and make other illogical connections as part of his illness. The issue here seems to me to first define love itself. It is not love if you must use other language, like companionship, or safety, or trust, to explain love. Love is singularly its own entity, its own concept. We may see love in action in a variety of ways, but love itself is too complex to be dissected rationally. Love reaches beyond the bounds of logic; love conquers the realm of the rational. Love makes us human, and is found to lie mostly in the aspect of ourselves we label as emotion.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I love your blog!
ReplyDeleteI have not read this book, but you did a great job with this piece. I had no idea you could write this well. You should write more often!Your voice in this is strong and transitions are well done. Nice job!
ReplyDeleteWow. You wrote! I liked the voice in this piece. I also liked the introduction. I liked how you quoted Madeline's piece and took it in a different direction.
ReplyDeleteI have not read this book yet but I think you defintetly had a great response to this writing.You very smooth transiti0ons between paragrahs and a very nice author note. This was a advanced piece. Great Job!
ReplyDeleteI really like you piece, and I also agree with what Ashton had said about writing more! Also I think you had very good internal and external transitions.
ReplyDeleteGreat piece and updates to your blog but maybe you should change the background to something different
ReplyDeleteThis writing piece was very good. I really enjoyed how you wrote a response to Madeline's writing. You had great voice and transitions. Plus, I liked how you finally posted a writing piece to your blog.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Ashton. You should really post on your blog more often because you have a very strong voice and good sentence variations when it comes to length. You are a really good writer, you just need to write. (For real unlike your removed post from yesterday)
ReplyDeleteWrite more often, it's really good. Your voice is incredible in this piece and I hadn't read the other piece or this book but I can kind of tell what it is about through your writing, even though you didn't go to in depth.
ReplyDeleteMr. Roehl,
ReplyDeleteCONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM TIME FOR ME HAHA! Ok, so for your introduction, I think you should have more introduced the piece, instead of jumping right into the main information. I think it included information that should've been used in the body paragraphs. Also, I didn't like the way you ended your story. The last two sentences didn't really leave me with a lasting impression about what the story, or your blog post, was about. It left me with the fact that he loved his dog, and not with the emotion of love and its meaning. But, CONGRATULATIONS POSTING YOUR FIRST POST SINCE NOVEMBER OF 2010! I really did like this piece, and I think it includes a lot of voice. It totally reminds me of how you think! Good Job!!!!
It's a little bit confusing for a 13 year old to read without reading the book, but I could tell the flow of it was great. Nice job on a real post. "wink wink"
ReplyDeleteI, also, haven't read this story yet, but your voice is very strong in this piece. I, also, think you should write a lot more.
ReplyDeleteThis piece really shows your voice and clearly states your reaction from the book. All your paragraphs flowed very well with all the different transitions. It was informational, but laid back and personal at the same time. I can tell that you put a lot of thought into this piece. Amazing!
ReplyDeleteNICE JOB. (If you know what sarcasim is) Haha, jk. The voice stood out really well and your paragraphs flowed very well. I think you might want to do some more writing pieces more frequently, like you are always tugging on me to do so.
ReplyDelete~Redmon
Well.....It's about darn time! =)
ReplyDeleteI do agree with some of the other people, you should write more often. You had a good strong voice through the entire piece. Also it seemed that your paragraphs flowed good. (agreeing with Redmon)GOOD JOB!!!!
I really like this piece, and I am glad you are finally using your Blog. You are a really strong writer and demonstrated it in this piece. I could clearly see your opinion. And I disagree with Riah in the sense that your conclusion was weak, I thought it was strong in the fact that you told the reader what you were responding to and I thought you did a nice job introducing your opinion in the piece. Great job!
ReplyDeleteI really liked this writing piece, I thought your introduction was very strong.I also really liked your voice in this piece, I really liked the purpose in the story. I know you probably have a lot of other stuff to work on but it would be great if you wrote another writing piece. Very good job.
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