Weekly Response Thirteen

I've decided to use Lisa Zunshine's Theory of Mind and Experimental Representations of Fictional Consciousness as the theory text for my final paper. The discussion about theory of mind really and its relation to those with learning disabilities really intrigues me. Actually deciding on a thesis becomes the real problem. Zunshine says, "our ability to explain behavior in terms of the underlying states of mind-or our mind-reading ability-can furnish us with a series of surprising insights into our interaction with literary texts." I may incorporate this quote into my thesis, getting at the fact that Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time intrigues readers because of the difficulty Christopher displays in interpreting these states of mind. Zunshine also says, "theory of mind underlies our interaction with literary texts in such profound and complex ways that any endeavor to isolate one particular aspect of such an interaction feels like carving the text at joints that are fundamentally, paradigmatically absent." But looking at Christopher, that's exactly how his mind works. The base of mind-reading, this theory of mind, is absent for him, so the interaction is fundamentally different, bringing readers' interest in. I just have to decide a quote from the novel and form this into a coherent thought, and bam. Thesis.