Chapter 2 Summary

At precisely seven minutes past midnight, the narrator sees a dog lying on the grass on Mrs. Shear’s lawn, apparently asleep. He recognizes the dog as Wellington, Mrs. Shear’s standard poodle. The dog has been impaled on a garden fork, the tines passing all the way through Wellington’s body, pinning the dog to the turf. The narrator picks the dog up, and it is “leaking blood.” The narrator strokes Wellington and wonders who killed him.

Chapter 2 Analysis

Chapter 2 is only one page long, but within that short space Mark Haddon establishes himself as an innovative writer. Why, for example, would a writer begin his book with Chapter 2, instead of Chapter 1? The answer to that question is not revealed for several more chapters, but it is a powerful and integral component of the development of the narrator’s character. Although the...