Breve e concisa resenha:
O ESTRANHO CASO DO CACHORRO MORTO
Maria Cristina Garcia Vasconcellos (Resenha).
Ler um livro sempre é uma aventura, na medida em que conhecemos personagens, experimentamos sensações, vivemos situações que podem fazer parte de nossas vidas, ou mesmo outras que nos ficam apenas na imaginação. Às vezes, livros simples nos oferecem a oportunidade de entrarmos em contato com sentimentos e mesmo percepções que nos passam desapercebidas no cotidiano. Esse é o caso do "Estranho Caso do Cachorro Morto". É um livro de leitura agradável e fácil, que prende a atenção ao nos envolver com a história de Cristopher, seu personagem principal. Ele é um menino de 15 anos, com uma vida aparentemente tranqüila e que, de um momento para outro, se vê acusado do assassinato de Wellington, o cachorro de sua vizinha. É a partir desta situação que o livro se desenrola, alternando momentos em que Cristopher investiga o assassinato do cachorro, e surpreende-se ao deparar-se com fatos de sua vida, com outros momentos em que nos é apresentada a história da vida recente de Cristopher. Entretanto, permeando esta alternância de momentos, vamos acompanhando a maneira peculiar com que o personagem pensa e sente, como percebe as situações em que se vê envolvido, bem como a maneira como se relaciona com as pessoas com quem convive. A peculiaridade reside em que Cristopher é portador da Síndrome de Asperger, um dos chamados Transtornos Invasivos do Desenvolvimento. Estas são patologias em que há um severo prejuízo em áreas do desenvolvimento, como na capacidade de interagir com outras pessoas, na capacidade de comunicar-se ou há a presença de comportamentos ou interesses considerados estranhos pelos demais. O que caracteriza especificamente a Síndrome de Asperger é que muitas vezes a linguagem está preservada, assim como a capacidade cognitiva pode ser normal ou até elevada (são pessoas consideradas muito inteligentes, em áreas específicas), mas ocorre a dificuldade nos relacionamentos sociais, na compreensão das convenções sociais e da expressão afetiva das outras pessoas. Há uma baixa capacidade para empatizar e para compreender comportamentos não verbais. Estas características fazem com que, muitas vezes, a criança ou adulto portador da Síndrome de Asperger sejam reconhecidos em seu convívio social como pessoas diferentes, mais do que portadoras de uma patologia. É o caso de Cristopher, que necessita das rotinas para sentir-se tranquilo, tem dificuldades para compreender o que ocorre ao seu redor quando necessita comunicar-se com pessoas que não compreendem sua maneira de pensar. Está voltado mais para o "seu" mundo, na medida em que é o mundo em que sente-se tranquilo, em que pode compreender e controlar o que ocorre e assim preservar sua capacidade de pensar. Nesse seu mundo há o interesse especial, e a grande facilidade para lidar com os números, há esquemas montados dos quais pode se utilizar para enfrentar situações difíceis, e há a possibilidade de evitar o contato mais próximo com os outros, o que tanto o assusta. Desta maneira, a partir das situações que vão ocorrendo no transcorrer da história, vamos compreendendo com muita clareza, uma vez que estamos muito próximos do pensamento e dos afetos de Cristopher, as razões de sua "estranha" conduta. E penso que esta é a maior riqueza e aventura do livro, podermos acompanhar e compreender de uma maneira muito afetuosa a maneira como o personagem experimenta e pensa as situações que vai vivendo. Nos é possibilitado ir além da observação de sua conduta, da sua "diferença", da sua doença, para encontrarmos o menino assustado, que tem que lidar com situações muito difíceis. Com isto, somos levados a exercitar justamente aquilo que é difícil para o próprio Cristopher, a compreensão do humano que está para além do comportamento, que não é dito, mas apenas sentido, e que está presente em todos nós.
Trechos mais notáveis do livro:
“61. Mrs. Forbes at school said that when Mother died she had gone to heaven. That was
because Mrs. Forbes is very old and she believes in heaven. And she wears tracksuit trousers because she says that they are more comfortable than normal trousers. And one of her legs is very slightly shorter than the other one because of an accident on a motorbike.
But when Mother died she didn't go to heaven because heaven doesn't exist.
Mrs. Peters's husband is a vicar called the Reverend Peters, and he comes to our school
sometimes to talk to us, and I asked him where heaven was and he said, "It's not in our
universe. It's another kind of place altogether."
The Reverend Peters makes a funny ticking noise with his tongue sometimes when he is
thinking. And he smokes cigarettes and you can smell them on his breath and I don't like this.
I said that there wasn't anything outside the universe and there wasn't another kind of place
altogether. Except that there might be if you went through a black hole, but a black hole is
what is called a singularity, which means it is impossible to find out what is on the other side
because the gravity of a black hole is so big that even electromagnetic waves like light can't
get out of it, and electromagnetic waves are how we get information about things which are
far away. And if heaven was on the other side of a black hole, dead people would have to be
fired into space on rockets to get there, and they aren't or people would notice.
I think people believe in heaven
to carry on living and they don't like the idea that other people will move into their house and
put their things into the rubbish.
The Reverend Peters said, "Well, when I say that heaven is outside the universe it's really just
a manner of speaking. I suppose what it really means is that they are with God."
And I replied, "But where is God?"
And the Reverend Peters said that we should talk about this on another day when he had
more time.
What actually happens when you die is that your brain stops working and your body rots, like
Rabbit did when he died and we buried him in the earth at the bottom of the garden. And all
his molecules were broken down into other molecules and they went into the earth and were
eaten by worms and went into the plants and if we go and dig in the same place in 10 years
there will be nothing except his skeleton left. And in 1,000 years even his skeleton will be
gone. But that is all right because he is a part of the flowers and the apple tree and the
hawthorn bush now.
When people die they are sometimes put into coffins, which means that they don't mix with
the earth for a very long time until the wood of the coffin rots.
But Mother was cremated. This means that she was put into a coffin and burned and ground
up and turned into ash and smoke. I do not know what happens to the ash and I couldn't ask at
the crematorium because I didn't go to the funeral. 
But the smoke goes out of the chimney
But the smoke goes out of the chimneyand into the air and sometimes I look up into the sky and I think that there are molecules of
Mother up there, or in clouds over Africa or the Antarctic, or coming down as rain in the rain
forests in Brazil, or in snow somewhere.”
l07. The Hound of the Baskervilles is my favorite book.
In The Hound of the Baskervilles, Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson get a visit from
James Mortimer, who is a doctor from the moors in Devon. James Mortimer's friend, Sir
Charles Baskerville, has died of a heart attack and James Mortimer thinks that he might have
been scared to death. James Mortimer also has an ancient scroll which describes the curse of
the Baskervilles.
On this scroll it says that Sir Charles Baskerville had an ancestor called Sir Hugo Baskerville,
who was a wild, profane and godless man. And he tried to do sex with a daughter of a
yeoman, but she escaped and he chased her across the moor. And his friends, who were
daredevil roisterers, chased after him.
And when they found him, the daughter of the yeoman had died of exhaustion and fatigue.
And they saw a great black beast, shaped like a hound yet larger than any hound that ever
mortal eye has rested on, and this hound was tearing the throat out of Sir Hugo Baskerville.
And one of the friends died of fear that very night and the other two were broken men for the
rest of their days.
James Mortimer thinks that the Hound of the Baskervilles might have scared Sir Charles to
death and he is worried that his son and heir, Sir Henry Baskerville, will be in danger when
he goes to the hall in Devon.
So Sherlock Holmes sends Doctor Watson to Devon with Sir Henry Baskerville and James
Mortimer. And Doctor Watson tries to work out who might have killed Sir Charles
Baskerville. And Sherlock Holmes says he will stay in London, but he travels to Devon
secretly and does investigations of his own.
And Sherlock Holmes finds out that Sir Charles was killed by a neighbor called Stapleton
who is a butterfly collector and a distant relation of the Baskervilles. And Stapleton is poor,
so he tries to kill Sir Henry Baskerville so that he will inherit the hall.
In order to do this he has brought a huge dog from London and covered it in phosphorus to
make it glow in the dark, and it was this dog which scared Sir Charles Baskerville to death.
And Sherlock Holmes and Watson and Lestrade from Scotland Yard catch him. And
Sherlock Holmes and Watson shoot the dog, which is one of the dogs which gets killed in the
story, which is not nice because it is not the dog's fault. And Stapleton escapes into the
Grimpen Mire, which is part of the moor, and he dies because he is sucked into a bog.
There are some bits of the story I don't like. One bit is the ancient scroll because it is written
in old language which is difficult to understand, like this
Learn then from this story not to fear the fruits of the past, but rather to be circumspect in the
future, that those foul passions whereby our family has suffered so grievously may not again
be loosed to our undoing.
And sometimes Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (who is the author) describes people like this
There was something subtly wrong with the face, some coarseness of expression, some
hardness, perhaps of eye, some looseness of lip which marred its perfect beauty.
And I don't know what some hardness, perhaps of eye means, and I'm not interested in faces.
But sometimes it is fun not knowing what the words mean because you can look them up in a
dictionary, like goyal (which is a deep dip) or tors (which are hills or rocky heights).
I like The Hound of the Baskervilles because it is a detective story, which means that there
are clues and Red Herrings.
These are some of the clues
1. Two of Sir Henry Baskerville's boots go missing when he is staying at a hotel in London.
This means that someone wants to give them to the Hound of the Baskervilles to smell, like a
bloodhound, so that it can chase him. This means that the Hound of the Baskervilles is not a
supernatural being but a real dog.
2. Stapleton is the only person who knows how to get through the Grimpen Mire and he tells
Watson to stay out of it for his own safety. This means that he is hiding something in the
middle of the Grimpen Mire and doesn't want anyone else to find it.
3. Mrs. Stapleton tells Doctor Watson to "go straight back to London instantly." This is
because she thinks Doctor Watson is Sir Henry Baskerville and she knows that her husband
wants to kill him.
And these are some of the Red Herrings
1. Sherlock Holmes and Watson are followed when they are in London by a man in a coach
with a black beard. This makes you think that the man is Barrymore, who is the caretaker at
Baskerville Hall, because he is the only other person who has a black beard. But the man is
really Stapleton, who is wearing a false beard.
2. Selden, the Netting Hill murderer. This is a man who has escaped from a prison nearby and
is being hunted down on the moors, which makes you think that he has something to do
with the story, because he is a criminal, but he hasn't anything to do with the story at all.
3. The Man on the Tor. This is a silhouette of a man that Doctor Watson sees on the moor at
night and doesn't recognize, which makes you think it is the murderer. But it is Sherlock
Holmes who has come to Devon secretly.
I also like The Hound of the Baskervilles because I like Sherlock Holmes and I think that if I
were a proper detective he is the kind of detective I would be. He is very intelligent and he
solves the mystery and he says
The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.
But he notices them, like I do. Also it says in the book
Sherlock Holmes had, in a very remarkable degree, the power of detaching his mind at will.
And this is like me, too, because if I get really interested in something, like practicing maths,
or reading a book about the Apollo missions or great white sharks, I don't notice anything
else and Father can be calling me to come and eat my supper and I won't hear him. And this
is why I am very good at playing chess, because I detach my mind at will and concentrate on
the board and after a while the person I am playing will stop concentrating and start
scratching their nose, or staring out of the window, and then they will make a mistake and I
will win.
Also Doctor Watson says about Sherlock Holmes
His mind... was busy in endeavouring to frame some scheme into which all these strange and
apparently disconnected episodes could be fitted.
And that is what I am trying to do by writing this book.
Also Sherlock Holmes doesn't believe in the supernatural, which is God and fairy tales and
Hounds of Hell and curses, which are stupid things.
And I am going to finish this chapter with two interesting facts about Sherlock Holmes
1. In the original Sherlock Holmes stories Sherlock Holmes is never described as wearing a
deerstalker hat, which is what he is always wearing in pictures and cartoons. The deerstalker
hat was invented by a man called Sidney Paget, who did the illustrations for the original
books.
2. In the original Sherlock Holmes stories Sherlock Holmes never says "Elementary, my dear
Watson." He only ever says this in films and on the television.
Sobre O Cão Dos Baskerville:
Let's read more books in english, it's healthy :P
ResponderExcluirI loved what I read in this book and your blog.
xoxo ;*