Let the novel or play guide you through the story?

The Curious Incident of The Dog in The Night-time differs notably in its play version and novel version, especially when you examine their page numbers. Both play and novel are forms of literature in which authors or playwrights convey their story and their emotion through their words; nonetheless, their reading experience, content and goals are disparate. Readers can realize those key different elements in these two versions of The Curious Incident of The Dog in The Night-time.

To begin with, comparing with novels, plays, maybe except for those written in ancient English, were easier to read yet harder to put oneself into the plot. The most obvious reason that the plays are easier to read is dialogues occupy most of the play while there are thorough descriptions of character’s mind activities, past experiences, circumstances and actions, etc. in the novel. However, because of those descriptions, novel in my point of view is far more attractive than the play. Novels can really connect the reader to the story and characters themselves. With only dialogues and the lack of details, the characters in the play version of The Curious Incident of The Dog in The Night-time is comparatively pale and humdrum. The figure of Christopher in the play is not as “complete” as that in the novel in the readers’ eyes. After I finished reading the play version, I viewed Christopher as a ridiculous and ungrateful kid, especially when he escaped from his father, who loves and takes cares of him deeply, because he absurdly assumes that since his father killed the dog, he will kill him as well. I know Christopher is autistic, but reading the play, I just cannot comprehend his actions and find a reason to justify what or why he is doing these things. Thanks to the first-person narration, all those detailed mind activities, like “I couldn’t trust him, even though he has said ‘Trust me,’because he had told a lie about a big thing”(321 Mark), and those pictures that Christopher draws in the novel, Christopher’s actions gradually start to make sense to me and I can put myself into Christopher’s position to view events happening around him.

Secondly, unlike novels, plays are meant to be performed. When adapting novels to plays, playwrights have to make compromises and cut some parts of the novel, because some of the plot is hard or impossible to perform on stage. The plays are set for stages and the actors or the directors are the ones who control the elements in the play. In the play version of The Curious Incident of The Dog in The Night-time, the descriptions of the characters’ movement and the surrounding circumstances are so simple that they are only consisted of just a few words. For instance “he creams”,”he groans” and “train starts to rumbling”( 72 Mark). There is much space in the play for the actors to specify and complete. For instance, how Christopher groans and screams, and what effect does the rumble of the train have on those passengers including Christopher. Unlike the novel version, which is vivid and detailed itself, the play version can only be vivid by performing it through the performers’ understanding and imagination of the characters and plot.

To sum up, both versions of the story was well written and the key reason of these differences between the two is simply their different aims: novels are mainly for readers while plays are mainly for performers.