John Penza, Farhiyo Dahir, Zhenyao Dong

In the book Christopher reacts emotionally different then other people in several different ways. For example, Christopher doesn’t understand other people’s emotions, as when his dad tells him that his mom is in the hospital and instead of feeling sad he is happy that his dad did not look him in the eyes and along with that he doesn’t not act sad and just acts caring. He instead says, “We will need to take her food,” and his reasoning was that he knows hospital food isn’t very good. He is very caring, but not sad and worried that his mom could be in danger or dying. (23) Christopher doesn’t understand death or what his dad is feeling, and with that he is unable to communicate with others and doesn’t feel the same as others do. Another key example is that he can only tell the difference between a happy face and a sad face. One of his teachers had given him facial recognition cards to help him out with this as seen in, “Then she drew some other pictures, but I was unable to say what these meant.” (3) He is unable to read other people and know when something else is wrong and when he should react to these emotions. Through all of this Christopher’s emotions put him on the outside of understanding for other people and this causes confusion for others. His emotions and his lack of being able to recognize when to react allows for him to be on the outside more and not fit in with the normal crowd.