Everyone faces challenges in life. It a matters of how you learn to overcome them and use them to your advantage.In the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by mark haddon, Christopher’s character demonstrates how situations result or necessitate that one overcomes obstacles.

He shows this by being smart, optimistic and determined.Christopher is very smart hence his condition, while others might argue he is smart because of his disorder. Christopher is always trying to solve the next puzzle and when he had found out that Ms.shears dog the next door neighbor had been murdered, we the readers are given a view from Christopher’s perspective and how his mind works. In the beginning of the book, Christopher is blamed for killing Mr. Wellington(Mrs Shears dog)  and is arrested for assaulting a police officer, The readers are shown how intelligent he is: ”It was nice in the police cell. It was almost a perfect cube.

2 meters long by 2 meters wide by 2  meter high. It contained approximately 8 cubic of air.” (Haddon 14.) Therefore showing he can get himself out of any situation when needed. Though his condition might have been why he was good at math and physics but he was able to take advantage of that and not let his situation refrain him: ” I am going to go to university and study mathematics or physics, or physics and mathematics,(which is a Joint Honor School), because I like mathematics and physics and  I’m very good at it.”(Haddon 26.

)Christopher is an optimistic person who is hopeful in the future regardless of his condition and always positive even though it was in little ways, even when all things seem to be going wrong. Christopher who goes through a lot of challenges as he tries to find himself as an individual due to his Autism. Although it isn’t mentioned in the book Christopher suffers from Asperger’s syndrome, which is an Autism Disorder. That means he sees the world straightforward, specific way and has difficulty in communicating and forming relationships with other people and making connections between circumstances but he doesn’t let that define who he is and what he can do.An example of him being optimistic is when his pet rat died: “And another bad thing was that Toby died because he was 2 years and 7 months old, which is very old for a rat and I said I wanted to bury him but mother didn’t have a garden so I buried him in a big plastic pot of Earth like a pot you put in a plant.” (Haddon 217.

) Instead of crying or griefing Christopher decides to look at Toby’s death from a different point of view, another example of him being hopeful is when he was told by Terry that the only job he could get is collecting supermarket  trollies or cleaning  due to his condition and he said: ” Father said that Terry was jealous of my being cleverer than him. Which was a stupid thing to think because we weren’t in a competition.” (Haddon 25.)Third, Christopher is a very determined individual whether it be getting an A level in mathematics or traveling to London all by himself. He shows us that determination can take you far in life if only if you don’t give up. Christopher had discovered that his father was the one who murdered Mr. Wellington, Who is Mrs.

shears dog so he decided he didn’t want to live with his father anymore and packed bag and took his pet rat toby with him to London to meet his mother: ” And then I thought that I could go and live with mother because she was my family and I knew where she lived because I could remember the address from the letters.”(Haddon 129.)  Later on in the story Christophers goes through some challenges as he embarks on his journey to London, one of the obstacles he had to overcome is and he could have easily given up and went back home but he worked up the courage and faced his fear: ” I wanted to go home but I was frightened of going home and tried to make a plan of what I should.”(Haddon 145.) Therefore showing audience you can’t accomplish anything living in fear.