Judy's Letters

Through Judy's letters for Christopher Haddon helps us to understand what Judy is going through and why she made the decision to leave Christopher for a new life. From the letters, we recall old memories Judy once shared with Christopher and the way they make her feel guilty for choosing to restart her relationship with her son not being her top priority. One story she focuses on is the time when she took Christopher with her to do Christmas shopping at a busy centre. She explains her sons' meltdown as an embarrassing event that furthers her decision to leave when she states that she "was at the end of her tether." After watching Ed take care of their son while she was unable to, she noticed how well Christopher and his father got along without her which makes her feel "invisible" and unneeded. Judy has tried to bring up Christopher to the her best ability with no one offering any advice to the unexperienced mother, and so everything she attempts at never effectively works how she imagined in her head it would. Our sympathy comes from Judy's willingness to keep trying and not giving up on her socially challenged son but with the lack of help and advice her hope slowly runs out.

Mark Haddon uses Judy's lack of education to create empathy between the readers and Judy's decisions. In Judy's letters, she commonly misspells words such as "argumant" and "survayors", informing us she has little eduction. This also applies to our knowledge of Judy's little experience in a work place environment, as ever since Christopher was born she has become a full-time stay home mum, seeing that Judy's own mother decided to not help out and has little role in Christopher's upbringing. Judy tries to explain to Christopher why she never came back for him in her letters and says "when I rang your father he said I couldn't come back." "He said I couldn't talk to you" Christopher's father felt so betrayed that she could just give up on their son. Judy "didn't know what to do" as she had no knowledge of her legal rights in this situation which Ed used to his advantage to make sure she didn't have anything to do with their son ever again, hence when Judy started writing letters to Christopher and Ed hid them from him so no contact could be made between the two. Our sympathy goes out to Judy when she is denied access to see her own