I'll Give You the Sun
question
Do you think Noah is autistic?
I could definitely see him as somewhere on the spectrum. Either way, he was a compelling character.
Now, after clearing up all this misconceptions about autism, I'll explain why I headcanon Noah as autistic.
First of all I want to clarify that you can't diagnose a person (real of fictional) with a mental disorder unless you are a mental health professional that has had several interviews with said person in which you evaluate if they do or do not meet the criteria for said mental disorder. So I'm not at all saying that Noah is 100% sure autistic. Not even a mental health professional that had read the book could. Because he's a fictional character and nobody can have interviews with him to evaluate it. So the only person that can confirm if Noah is autistic or not, is Jandy Nelson (the author of this incredible and amazing book if you didn't know).
That been said, Noah shows lots of autistic traits. In the social and communication department, he definitely is more socially awkward and more introvert than I've never been or will ever be. He even has moments of selective mutism, which is a common trait too. In page 89, joking with Brian about them being aliens trying to pass as earthling, he says that the aliens didn't prepare him, that that's why he's so clueless and then thinks "I so totally missed the class the day all the required information was passed out". This resonates so much with me as an autistic person, it's just a perfect description of how does it feel to be autistic.
Another big trait of autism is special interests. Most autistic people have one or two (they can be more too, but they tend to be more secundary) topics of interest about which we want and have to know everything or a hobby that obsess us so much we have to spend hours and hours everyday doing it. In my case, my main special interest is politics, I spend most of my time reading or thinking about it. In the case of Noah, it's obviously art. But he even has a second special interest, animal documentaries.
Just with this I think it'd be enough to meet the official criteria for autism of the WHO, that I'll leave here (with some clarifications so you understand it better) for you to have your own conclusions
"Autism spectrum disorder is characterized by persistent deficits (deficits, which isn't at all the same as inability, and that vary greatly in intensity from one autistic person to another) in the ability to initiate and to sustain reciprocal social interaction and social communication, and by a range of restricted, repetitive, and inflexible patterns of behaviour and interests (this is special interests)."
First of all I want to clarify that you can't diagnose a person (real of fictional) with a mental disorder unless you are a mental health professional that has had several interviews with said person in which you evaluate if they do or do not meet the criteria for said mental disorder. So I'm not at all saying that Noah is 100% sure autistic. Not even a mental health professional that had read the book could. Because he's a fictional character and nobody can have interviews with him to evaluate it. So the only person that can confirm if Noah is autistic or not, is Jandy Nelson (the author of this incredible and amazing book if you didn't know).
That been said, Noah shows lots of autistic traits. In the social and communication department, he definitely is more socially awkward and more introvert than I've never been or will ever be. He even has moments of selective mutism, which is a common trait too. In page 89, joking with Brian about them being aliens trying to pass as earthling, he says that the aliens didn't prepare him, that that's why he's so clueless and then thinks "I so totally missed the class the day all the required information was passed out". This resonates so much with me as an autistic person, it's just a perfect description of how does it feel to be autistic.
Another big trait of autism is special interests. Most autistic people have one or two (they can be more too, but they tend to be more secundary) topics of interest about which we want and have to know everything or a hobby that obsess us so much we have to spend hours and hours everyday doing it. In my case, my main special interest is politics, I spend most of my time reading or thinking about it. In the case of Noah, it's obviously art. But he even has a second special interest, animal documentaries.
Just with this I think it'd be enough to meet the official criteria for autism of the WHO, that I'll leave here (with some clarifications so you understand it better) for you to have your own conclusions
"Autism spectrum disorder is characterized by persistent deficits (deficits, which isn't at all the same as inability, and that vary greatly in intensity from one autistic person to another) in the ability to initiate and to sustain reciprocal social interaction and social communication, and by a range of restricted, repetitive, and inflexible patterns of behaviour and interests (this is special interests)."
Hm. I don't know if I would say he is autistic. (I don't know, maybe in some sort of way) It did seem that he saw the world a little differently. He also use such creative metaphors, which seem to describe how he saw actions in his mind. Although, I didn't think of this until I saw some other reviews.
Nah I don't think so, I think he's just a very intelligent and creative person who thinks about things slightly differently (more brilliantly) to everyone else and thus maybe has a bit of difficulty connecting with people of his own age.
I have not finished reading this book yet, but I feel like he may very well be. His feelings and behaviors remind me very much of how some of my autistic friends describe their own experiences. I am simply loving this book, the characters, and writing style.
he seems to be at first, but then we see him as an outgoing teenager in the latter half of the book. but then, i honestly thought he had mild autism at first. don't know any autistic people to be a good judge of that, tbh
It's hard to say. If he did have autism it would be VERY mild. I mostly just think he was a different, sensitive kid.
No, I don't think so. He is an artist, he sees everything in a different way, he finds art even in a rock. And this was a thing that made me to fall in love with this caracter and with this book as well.
I think, and I might be quite right, that he suffered of anxiety a lot. And the trauma he suffered after losing his mother had a huge impact, and it changed him a lot, until he went back to... normal, I'd like to say.
But no, I wouldn't say that Noah is autistic.
I think, and I might be quite right, that he suffered of anxiety a lot. And the trauma he suffered after losing his mother had a huge impact, and it changed him a lot, until he went back to... normal, I'd like to say.
But no, I wouldn't say that Noah is autistic.
I don't think Noah is autistic. I wouldn't call him exactly normal, but that may just be because he is so creative and artistic and views the world differently than most people.
As an autistic person, I see here lots of misconceptions about what autism is and how does it look like.
Autism is a spectrum disorder. We share some traits, which are necessary to have to meet the diagnosis criteria. But there is as much diversity and differences between us as between any random person compared to another random person. We are just people, you know.
But to meet the criteria, it isn't at all necessary to have such impaired social and communication skils that anybody we met would instantly see that we are disabled. In fact, believe it or not, most of us are very rarely perceived as disabled, we are just perceived as very quirky, weird, social awkard (and just awkward in general), eccentric people. There are even autistic people that look completely normal and avarage (although they are very few, and mostly women).
Some of us do look visibly disabled, usually the ones that can't speak with their mouth parts (which isn't the same as don't having anything to say or being unable to communicate by other means), who are around 15% of us, and the ones that also have intellectual impairments, around 10%.
But this figures most likely are even lower, because recent research suggest that autism is extremely underdiagnosed (I'm myself undiagnosed, although I've already started the process to get my diagnosis, hopefully I'll have it in a few months), specially between women. The reason is this harmful misconceptions about the disorder, that make harder for a person to have access to the diagnosis if they differ from what society think an autistic person looks like (and the vast majority of us differ from it greatly).
Other harmful stereotypes and misconceptions about us is that we are usually unable to have friends, and when we do they are a few and we don't really connect with each other, that we are unable to have romantic partners or that we are unable to live autonomously, go to college, have a job, and having healthy, succesful, happy lives in general. As I've said before, autism is a spectrum, so our experiences differ a lot between us. Of course there are a lot of autistic people that are unable to do all or some of this things, but they are the minority. Most of us do struggle in most of those areas, but we can manage to succed.
Taking me as an example, I have and always have had friends, good friends that I really love, sometimes even more friends than I could handle, even if I really struggle making them (for example, I've moved away from my town to attend college this year and I haven't made a single friend here yet), in romantic relationship I do suck a lot, I've never had a partner (I'm just 18 though), but that could be too because of my sexuality (I'm bi, but I don't see myself dating a woman/femenine person and I don't know that many bi/gay guys/masculine people), I do struggle, really, really hard living autonomously (now that I don't live with my parents), but hey, I'm young, that's normal even for neurotypicals, and I manage to survive, and about college, I've already said I'm attending it (failing every subject though). I don't live a healthy, happy, successful life, but I know I'll manage, once I get the support that I need.
Hope this clarifies for someone reading (well, maybe no one is reading, this comment is extremely long xD, sorry for that, I'm terrible summarizing, which is indeed an autistic trait) how diverse autistic experiences are and that you just can't assume someone doesn't have autism because they don't look very disabled.
Autism is a spectrum disorder. We share some traits, which are necessary to have to meet the diagnosis criteria. But there is as much diversity and differences between us as between any random person compared to another random person. We are just people, you know.
But to meet the criteria, it isn't at all necessary to have such impaired social and communication skils that anybody we met would instantly see that we are disabled. In fact, believe it or not, most of us are very rarely perceived as disabled, we are just perceived as very quirky, weird, social awkard (and just awkward in general), eccentric people. There are even autistic people that look completely normal and avarage (although they are very few, and mostly women).
Some of us do look visibly disabled, usually the ones that can't speak with their mouth parts (which isn't the same as don't having anything to say or being unable to communicate by other means), who are around 15% of us, and the ones that also have intellectual impairments, around 10%.
But this figures most likely are even lower, because recent research suggest that autism is extremely underdiagnosed (I'm myself undiagnosed, although I've already started the process to get my diagnosis, hopefully I'll have it in a few months), specially between women. The reason is this harmful misconceptions about the disorder, that make harder for a person to have access to the diagnosis if they differ from what society think an autistic person looks like (and the vast majority of us differ from it greatly).
Other harmful stereotypes and misconceptions about us is that we are usually unable to have friends, and when we do they are a few and we don't really connect with each other, that we are unable to have romantic partners or that we are unable to live autonomously, go to college, have a job, and having healthy, succesful, happy lives in general. As I've said before, autism is a spectrum, so our experiences differ a lot between us. Of course there are a lot of autistic people that are unable to do all or some of this things, but they are the minority. Most of us do struggle in most of those areas, but we can manage to succed.
Taking me as an example, I have and always have had friends, good friends that I really love, sometimes even more friends than I could handle, even if I really struggle making them (for example, I've moved away from my town to attend college this year and I haven't made a single friend here yet), in romantic relationship I do suck a lot, I've never had a partner (I'm just 18 though), but that could be too because of my sexuality (I'm bi, but I don't see myself dating a woman/femenine person and I don't know that many bi/gay guys/masculine people), I do struggle, really, really hard living autonomously (now that I don't live with my parents), but hey, I'm young, that's normal even for neurotypicals, and I manage to survive, and about college, I've already said I'm attending it (failing every subject though). I don't live a healthy, happy, successful life, but I know I'll manage, once I get the support that I need.
Hope this clarifies for someone reading (well, maybe no one is reading, this comment is extremely long xD, sorry for that, I'm terrible summarizing, which is indeed an autistic trait) how diverse autistic experiences are and that you just can't assume someone doesn't have autism because they don't look very disabled.
Me personally as a person with autism myself, I see a few similarities between Noah and myself. I definitely believe that he's somewhere on the spectrum.
No, he doesn't seem so. He doesn't seem to have a mental disability or anything.
No, no way. The reason you feel like there is something different about Noah is because of Nelson's beautiful and unique writing style which really combines metaphors with the real world to convey facts and emotions at the same time.
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