I'm a great reader of children's literature. And now that I'm homeschooling my 13 year old son with high functioning autism, I'm "previewing" (and reviewing) novels that I think he might enjoy. What's struck me in reading these books is how many of the characters - sometimes the heroes, sometimes the secondary characters - seem to be described in such a way that they could easily be considered autistic. For example...
Calder's grandmother had once told him that he breathed patterns the way other people breathed air. Calder sighed. If only thoughts didn't have to be broken down into words. Too much talk was hard to listen to, and writing, for him, was a brutal process. So much got left behind. ( From Chasing Vermeer by Blue Balliett)
It was true that Charles Wallace seldom spoke when anybody was around, so that many people thought he'd never learned to talk. And it was true that he hadn't talked at all until he was almost four. ... "Don't worry about Charles Wallace, Meg," her father had once told her..."There's nothing the matter with his mind. He just does things in his own way and in his own time." (From A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle)
Of course, characters like Calder and Charles Wallace wind up being heroes, and saving the day by the end of the book. Their status as weirdos and outcasts don't seem to have any serious impact on their ability to solve mysteries, defeat baddies, or otherwise take action on the world around them. Are they autistic? Their differences are distinct enough that, to me, they certainly appear so.
As I thought about it, I realized that many, many characters from literature share the status of smart-but-odd loner, capable of great things but trapped in a world that misunderstands them (and that they misunderstand). Could they all be autistic?
And it's not just literature. Last night, I watched the relatively new animated film Polar Express with my kids, and realized that one of the main children in the film showed every characteristic of Asperger syndrome. Socially awkward with a flat affect, "professorial" in his self-presentation, and incredibly knowledgable about selected subjects, he's actually referred to as a "know it all."
All this reflection is simply a way of saying that I now see autism - everywhere. And I begin to realize that the qualities that make up high functioning autism and asperger syndrome - social disconnectedness, perseveration on patterns and parts of things, verbal delays and differences, difficulty with establishing interpersonal relationships - have been around for a long time.
Do you know a character with autism?
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We all have seen the cartoons with the “egghead”, the smart kid with an exaggerated head. Is it so strange that we have found out young people with autism have disproportionately sized craniums, which return to more normal proportions at puberty?
Did Sherlock Holmes exhibit the symptoms of Asperger’s?
Why was Spock always so popular with geeks?
Scott Adams was writing Dilbert long before Asperger’s was in the DSM IV; it seems obvious to me Dilbert has Asperger’s.
I am endowed with Asperger’s. We have the recent British study which demonstrates 1% of adults as having it. I estimate at least 25% of engineers have Asperger’s. We have seen Aspies around us all our lives. We Aspies sometimes stand out for our eccentricities and have become the stuff of comic book mad scientists and classic books. What explosion of autism; we have always been here!
The character Bartleby in Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener”
Sherlock Holmes
Charles Wallace in A Wrinkle in Time
Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory
Bastian from The Neverending Story
The main character House from the series House
I think the thing of “so-and-so is/was actually autistic/aspergers” is kind of overdone. Yet, I can’t resist saying that to me Hermione Granger (from the Harry Potter books) is a bit aspie, though maybe not full blown diagnosable aspie. I was disappointed in how she is portrayed in the HP movies. Emma Watson is a good actress and I would like her in some other role, but to me she is not Hermione. She plays the character as a conventional perky personable nice feisty teenager, without the fierce intellect that makes Hermione special (imho).
Since Twyla brought up the Harry Potter series, I’d suggest that the character that most strikes me as an Aspie is Snape – particularly when you read the discussions of his youth. Socially awkward – yes. Brilliant – why yes…check out the detail with which he annotated his copy of the Potions textbook. Narrowly focused interests. And yes, in the end, he is a hero/martyr. But it’s difficult to diagnose a storybook character in the same way that we aren’t really able to walk the streets and toss the label out with any authority. It’s a diagnosis. Characterized by a combination of behaviors, preferences, and ways-of-doing/thinking. Without the degree, we can simply wonder. The same way that I wonder if I’m married to an undiagnosed Aspie. I’m pretty sure I am – and I love him. what I would be more interested in seeing reviewed/critiqued are children’s books, young adult novels, etc. that attempt to portray characters that the author(s) identify as having autism/aspergers, and some discussion of how they do that and to what end. I’ve been looking for books that do this to read them myself. Anyone have any recommendations of books in which characters are clearly labeled/identified as being on the spectrum? Great insights…keep the discussion going.