The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon
幫學生做的功課:The narrator of the story is Christopher Boone. He was a 15-year-old boy who lived with his father and Toby, his pet rat. He was told that his mother was died of a heart attack two years ago. Christopher had Asperger’s Syndrome. He could not understand things happened in the world. He liked detective stories, especially Sherlock Holmes. He hated brown and yellow, France and the sight of four yellow cars in a row, which is the sign of a bad day. Strange as he may seem, he was mathematically gifted. He constantly solved mathematics problems in his head or verbally. Late one night, Christopher came across his neighbor's poodle, Wellington, which was killed with a garden fork. His neighbour found Christopher cradling her dead dog in his arms, and had him arrested. After spending a night in jail and inspired by Sherlock Holmes, Christopher decided to find out who had murdered Wellington. He became persistent to find out what had happened. Wellington's owner, Mrs. Shears, refused to speak to Christopher about the matter, and his father told him to stop investigating. There is another mystery involving Christopher's mother. Siobhan, Christopher's social worker, reacted with surprise when Christopher mentions her death. Christopher's father hated Mrs. Shears' estranged husband. The mystery of Wellington's death began to unveil the answers to questions in his own life and led him to the secrets of his parents' broken marriage. Also, it led him into an odyssey to find his place in the world. He must fall back on deductive logic to navigate the emotional complexities of a social world that remain a closed book to him. Some paragraphs that I like: "I watched the sky as we drove towards the town centre. It was a clear night and you could see the Milky Way. Some people think the Milky Way is a long line of stars, but it isn't. Our galaxy is a huge disc of stars millions of light years across and the solar system is somewhere near the outside edge of the disc. And then I thought about how, for a long time scientists were puzzled by the fact that the sky is dark at night, even though there are billions of stars in the universe and there must be stars in every direction you look, so that the sky should be full of starlight because there is very little in the way to stop the light reaching earth. Then they worked out that the universe was expanding, that the stars were all rushing away from one another after the Big Bang, and the further the stars were away from us the faster they were moving, some of them nearly as fast as the speed of light, which was why their light never reached us. I like this fact. It is something you can work out in your own mind just by looking at the sky above your head at night and thinking without having to ask anyone. And when the universe has finished exploding all the stars will slow down, like a ball that has been thrown into the air, and they will come to a halt and they will all begin to fall towards the centre of the universe again. And then there will be nothing to stop us seeing all the stars in the world because they will all be moving towards us, gradually faster and faster, and we will know that the world is going to end soon because when we look up into the sky at night there will be no darkness, just the blazing light of billions and billions of stars, all falling. Except that no one will see this because there will be no people left on the earth to see it. They will probably have become extinct by then. And even if there are people still in existence they will not see it because the light will be so bright and hot that everyone will be burnt to death, even if they live in tunnels." "I said that when Father got up in the morning he always put his trousers on before he put his socks on and it wasn't logical but he always did it that way, because he liked things in a nice order, too. Also whenever he went upstairs he went up two at a time, always starting with his right foot." (Excerpt: Chapter 47 )
The best description about evolution:
Excerpt from Chapter 199
People believe in God because the world is very complicated and they think it is very unlikely that anything as complicated as a flying squirrel or the human eye or the brain could happen by chance. But they should think logically and if they thought logically they would see that they can only ask this question because it has already happened and they exist. And there are billions of planets where there is no life, but there is no one on those planets with brains to notice. And it is like if everyone in the world was tossing coins eventually someone would get 5,698 heads in a row and they would think they were very special. But they wouldn't be because there would be millions of people who didn't get 5,698 heads.
And there is life on earth because of an accident. But it is a very special kind of accident. And for this accident to happen in this special way, there have to be 3 conditions. And these are
1. Things have to make copies of themselves (this is called Replication)
2. They have to make small mistakes when they do this (this is called Mutation)
3. These mistakes have to be the same in their copies (this is called Heritability)
And these conditions are very rare, but they are possible, and they cause life. And it just happens. But it doesn't have to end up with rhinoceroses and human beings and whales. It could end up with anything.
And, for example, some people say how can an eye happen by accident? Because an eye has to evolve from something else very like an eye and it doesn't just happen because of a genetic mistake, and what use is half an eye? But half an eye is very useful because half an eye means that an animal can see half of an animal that wants to eat it and get
out of the way, and it will eat the animal that only has a third of an eye or 49% of an eye instead because it hasn't got out of the way quick enough, and the animal that is eaten won't have babies because it is dead. And 1% of an eye is better than no eye.
And people who believe in God think God has put human beings on the earth because they think human beings are the best animal, but human beings are just an animal that will evolve into another animal, and that animal will be cleverer and it will put human beings into a zoo, like we put chimpanzees or gorillas into a zoo. Or human beings will
all catch a disease or make too much pollution and kill themselves, and then there will only be insects in the world and they will be the best animal.
And there is life on earth because of an accident. But it is a very special kind of accident. And for this accident to happen in this special way, there have to be 3 conditions. And these are
1. Things have to make copies of themselves (this is called Replication)
2. They have to make small mistakes when they do this (this is called Mutation)
3. These mistakes have to be the same in their copies (this is called Heritability)
And these conditions are very rare, but they are possible, and they cause life. And it just happens. But it doesn't have to end up with rhinoceroses and human beings and whales. It could end up with anything.
And, for example, some people say how can an eye happen by accident? Because an eye has to evolve from something else very like an eye and it doesn't just happen because of a genetic mistake, and what use is half an eye? But half an eye is very useful because half an eye means that an animal can see half of an animal that wants to eat it and get
out of the way, and it will eat the animal that only has a third of an eye or 49% of an eye instead because it hasn't got out of the way quick enough, and the animal that is eaten won't have babies because it is dead. And 1% of an eye is better than no eye.
And people who believe in God think God has put human beings on the earth because they think human beings are the best animal, but human beings are just an animal that will evolve into another animal, and that animal will be cleverer and it will put human beings into a zoo, like we put chimpanzees or gorillas into a zoo. Or human beings will
all catch a disease or make too much pollution and kill themselves, and then there will only be insects in the world and they will be the best animal.
When my mom died....
Excerpt from chapter 61
"Mrs Forbes at school said that when Mother died she had gone to heaven."
理學院的前院長也對我說相同的話
"But when Mother died she didn't go to heaven because heaven doesn't exist.
Mrs. Peters's husband is a vicar called the Reverend Peters, and he comes to our school sometimes to talk to us, and I asked him where heaven was and he said, "It's not in our universe. It's another kind of place altogether.
I said that there wasn't anything outside the universe and there wasn't another kind of place altogether. Except that there might be if you went through a black hole, but a black hole is what is called a singularity, which means it is impossible to find out what is on the
other side because the gravity of a black hole is so big that even electromagnetic waves like light can't get out of it, and electromagnetic waves are how we get information about things which are far away. And if heaven was on the other side of a black hole, dead people would have to be fired into space on rockets to get there, and they aren't or people would notice.
I think people believe in heaven because they don't like the idea of dying, because they want to carry on living and they don't like the idea that other people will move into their house and put their things into the rubbish.
The Reverend Peters said, "Well, when I say that heaven is outside the universe it's really just a manner of speaking. I suppose what it really means is that they are with God."
And I replied, "But where is God?"
And the Reverend Peters said that we should talk about this on another day when he had more time."
以下除了是Christopher的想法,也是我一直的想法:
"What actually happens when you die is that your brain stops working and your body rots, like Rabbit did when he died and we buried him in the earth at the bottom of the garden. And all his molecules were broken down into other molecules and they went into the earth and were eaten by worms and went into the plants and if we go and dig in the
same place in 10 years there will be nothing except hos skeleton left. And in 1,000 years even his skeleton will be gone. But that is all right because he is a part of the flowers and the apple tree and the hawthorn bush now.
When people die they are sometimes put into coffins which means that they don't mix with the earth for a very long timeuntil the wood of the coffin rots.
But Mother was cremated. This means that she was put into a coffin and burnt and ground up and turned into ash and smoke. I do not know what happens to the ash and I counldn't ask at the crematorium because I didn't go to the funeral. But the smoke goes out of the chimney and into the air and sometimes I look up into the sky and I think that there are molecules of Mother up there, or in clouds over Africa or the Antarctic, or coming down as rain in the rainforests in Brazil, or in snow somewhere."
"Mrs Forbes at school said that when Mother died she had gone to heaven."
理學院的前院長也對我說相同的話
"But when Mother died she didn't go to heaven because heaven doesn't exist.
Mrs. Peters's husband is a vicar called the Reverend Peters, and he comes to our school sometimes to talk to us, and I asked him where heaven was and he said, "It's not in our universe. It's another kind of place altogether.
I said that there wasn't anything outside the universe and there wasn't another kind of place altogether. Except that there might be if you went through a black hole, but a black hole is what is called a singularity, which means it is impossible to find out what is on the
other side because the gravity of a black hole is so big that even electromagnetic waves like light can't get out of it, and electromagnetic waves are how we get information about things which are far away. And if heaven was on the other side of a black hole, dead people would have to be fired into space on rockets to get there, and they aren't or people would notice.
I think people believe in heaven because they don't like the idea of dying, because they want to carry on living and they don't like the idea that other people will move into their house and put their things into the rubbish.
The Reverend Peters said, "Well, when I say that heaven is outside the universe it's really just a manner of speaking. I suppose what it really means is that they are with God."
And I replied, "But where is God?"
And the Reverend Peters said that we should talk about this on another day when he had more time."
以下除了是Christopher的想法,也是我一直的想法:
"What actually happens when you die is that your brain stops working and your body rots, like Rabbit did when he died and we buried him in the earth at the bottom of the garden. And all his molecules were broken down into other molecules and they went into the earth and were eaten by worms and went into the plants and if we go and dig in the
same place in 10 years there will be nothing except hos skeleton left. And in 1,000 years even his skeleton will be gone. But that is all right because he is a part of the flowers and the apple tree and the hawthorn bush now.
When people die they are sometimes put into coffins which means that they don't mix with the earth for a very long timeuntil the wood of the coffin rots.
But Mother was cremated. This means that she was put into a coffin and burnt and ground up and turned into ash and smoke. I do not know what happens to the ash and I counldn't ask at the crematorium because I didn't go to the funeral. But the smoke goes out of the chimney and into the air and sometimes I look up into the sky and I think that there are molecules of Mother up there, or in clouds over Africa or the Antarctic, or coming down as rain in the rainforests in Brazil, or in snow somewhere."
Excerpt from Chapter 59
"the Bible it says Thou shalt not kill but there were the Crusades and two world wars and the Gulf War and there were Christians killing people in all of them"
何時才會審判那些殺了人的基督徒?
何時才會審判那些殺了人的基督徒?
星星是生命的來源
Excerpt: chapter 83
"And all I could see would be stars. And stars are the places where the molecules that life is made of were constructed billions of years ago. For example all the iron in your blood which stops you being anemic was made in a star."
"And all I could see would be stars. And stars are the places where the molecules that life is made of were constructed billions of years ago. For example all the iron in your blood which stops you being anemic was made in a star."
st. christopher背耶穌過河前叫甚麼名字呢?
"My name is a metaphor. It means carrying Christ and it comes from the Greek words cristoV (which means Jesus Christ) and ferein and it was the name given to St Christopher because he carried Jesus Christ across a river.
This makes you wonder what he was called before he carried Christ across the river. But he wasn't called anything because this is an apocryphal story which means that it is a lie, too.
Mother used to say that it meant Christopher was a nice name because it was a story about being kind and helpful, but I do not want my name to mean a story about being kind and helpful. I want my name to mean me."
以上是節錄自The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time。 更多有關st. christopher的資料可參照http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Christopher
到底這個st. christopher背耶穌過河前叫甚麼名字呢?這是否一個謊言?
This makes you wonder what he was called before he carried Christ across the river. But he wasn't called anything because this is an apocryphal story which means that it is a lie, too.
Mother used to say that it meant Christopher was a nice name because it was a story about being kind and helpful, but I do not want my name to mean a story about being kind and helpful. I want my name to mean me."
以上是節錄自The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time。 更多有關st. christopher的資料可參照http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Christopher
到底這個st. christopher背耶穌過河前叫甚麼名字呢?這是否一個謊言?