5.3.3

Order & Disorder - Quotes

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Theme of Order and Disorder - Quotations

Christopher interprets the world through logic and facts. Here are a few key quotations:

Christopher's investigation

Christopher's investigation

  • Christopher depends upon:
    • precise details (“It was seven minutes after midnight…”)
    • reasoning and deduction (“I only know one person who didn’t like Mrs Shears and that is Mr Shears… This means that Mr Shears is my Prime Suspect”).
Coping strategies

Coping strategies

  • “Count the cubes of the cardinal numbers”.
    • Christopher finds safety and security in a world which can be measured and predicted precisely, hence his interest in subjects such as physics and astronomy.
__"Lies"__

"Lies"

  • Christopher considers metaphors to be “lies” because “imagining an apple in someone’s eye doesn’t have anything to do with liking someone a lot”.
Stories

Stories

  • Siobhan tries to help Christopher develop by getting him to see the value of “stories” as a way of making sense of the world.
  • Christopher is initially reluctant to allow his notebook to be turned into a performance, because acting is “pretending” and so “is like a kind of lie.”
  • But Siobhan offers the example of Sherlock Holmes stories to argue that “people find things which are kind of true in things which are made up”.
Jump to other topics
1

Introduction & Context

2

Form, Structure & Language

3

Text Summary & Analysis

4

Themes

5

Recap: Main Quotes

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