Book Review Of Flowers Of Algernon

“Eagar, Determined, and Motivated:” these three words describe Charlie Gordon in Daniel Keyes’s story “Flowers for Algernon”. Daniel Keyes writes about a thirty two year old man with a low IQ (Charlie Gordon) who strives to become “normal”. Charlie will do anything to become smarter even letting two doctors preform brain surgery to enhance his learning capability. Charlie evolves throughout the novel and by the end of his journey although his IQ is low he is a more complete person. He learns the true meaning of friendship and demonstrates intellectual growth as a person by overcoming obstacles and understanding various lessons.

Flowers for Algernon is about a middle-aged man suffering from mental retardation. The man is Charlie Gordon. The exposition of this novel is rather intricate. Flowers for Algernon takes place in the nineteen-fifties. Charlie is chosen to participate in an experiment that will supposedly raise his IQ. But it turns out that they turn him into a genius, and it is only temporary. Along the way he falls in love with his teacher, Miss Kinnian. But he grows so intelligent that they grew farther apart as Charlie gets smarter. There are also two doctors in the novel, Dr. Strauss and Professor Nemur.

Therefore, intelligence does not bring happiness. For Charlie, Ignorance is bliss. He realizes that his so- called ‘friends?’ were just using him to entertain their perverse humor. Also, he was fired from the job that he loved because his new intelligence level. This promotes Charlie into a short depression. This short depression made it clear that Charlie’s life prior to the experiment was better than his current conditions since he had a job which he looked forward to and so- called “friends”.Charlie says on May 20th "Now I'm more alone than ever before” (Keyes, 108). He had nobody to relate to at this point of the story because his intelligence grow to overpower other surrounding him. Charlie’s intelligence has already exceeded his teacher and the doctors. Before Charlie gained intelligence, even the simplest things in life were good enough for him. After he gained intelligence,none of those things mattered to him because his mind grew more complex. As a result, he felt alone and buried himself in his work.

When Charlie was intelligent he often got irritated at the doctors because they weren’t as smart as him. He had also dealt with a lot of emotion with Miss Kinnian, Charlie was in love with Miss Kinnian. When he regressed, he was embarrassed to see her because he thought she would think he was dumb. When Charlie was at a diner, he saw a kid with disabilities, and everyone was laughing at him and so was Charlie. He was upset with himself that he laughed at him because that kid was him before he had the surgery to make him smart.

He wears glasses but only for watching T.V. and movies. Charlie has a great motive because all he wants is to be smart for example, "After the operashun I'm gonna try to be smart. I'm gonna try awful hard. (p.11)". Charlie, being intellectually disabled, doesn't understand things, making him constantly happy. This is because he doesn't think about life. Charlie gets bullied but thinks they're being nice to him when they do things like "He really pulled a Charlie Gordon that time. I don't know why they say it but they always laff and I laff too. (p.23)". After the operation, he had a different outlook on life. He wanted to become smart so that he could talk with his coworkers about intelligent things like politics. Although, the operation made him too smart. His way of thinking was based on facts and intelligence, rather than emotion, feelings and instinct. Charlie was a genius and they weren't. He didn't know how to control his emotion because he never knew he had them, often making him go into depression and be

The award-winning short science fiction, Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes, digs deep in how society reacts to different levels of intelligence. The book covers a wide variety of society from the creative minds to world-renowned scientists. When a retarded adult becomes one of those brain maniacs through a scientific operation, you get the full spectrum of what it is like personally as a handicapped person and through the minds of a genius. In the reports, you can see the progress and comparison of Charlie’s realization towards other people’s capability of intelligence.

Charlie Gordon, a mentally compromised man, should not have received the surgery to increase his numerical intelligence-as judged by an IQ-and to become a normal man. While Daniel Keyes in “Flowers for Algernon” conveyed hope for psychologically impaired individuals, the surgery failed with countless devastating consequences. In all actuality, the complications that Charlie faced were genuine. As far as society was concerned, Charlie-having a lesser IQ than the average person-was regarded as unacceptable. The surgery was seen as a cure for this; nevertheless, it did not amount to any change in the way he was treated. Harnessing the insights from Algernon’s case and his own cognitive abilities, Charlie deciphered the effects and predicted the

Estimated 26% of people 18 or older are diagnosable with a mental disability. Charlie Gordon, a 37 year old man, has a mental disability and undergoes an operation to make him smart, but the result is that he becomes too smart and then hostile and eventually dies. Daniel Keyes portrays a theme in Flowers for Algernon that since some situation can come back and bite a person, be careful what you wish for.

His old friends didn’t like how smart he was, and his intelligence caused a social disconnect between him and his old buddies. “This intelligence has driven a wedge between me and all the people I once knew and loved.” Mr. Donnegan, the owner of Donnegan’s Plastic Box Company and Charlie’s old boss, and his old co-workers, sign a petition that states Charlie has to be fired. Everyone signs it but Fanny Girden, but even she doesn’t like the new Charlie; she finds it strange how he got so smart. Charlie, after being fired, realizes that his intelligence caused people to not like him. This made him feel very alone because he now had no friends that were not included at school and in the lab. “Now I’m more alone than ever before…”

When he regresses back to his pristine state with incipient understandings of the involutions of human nature. As he loses did recollections he still recollects some edifications that he learned when he was perspicacious one of them was. “It’s because I'm so dumb and I didn't know when I'm doing something dumb. People think it's funny when a dumb person can't do it the same way they can,” page 67. Another situation was when Charlie wanted to return back to work and when he went back his former colleagues that were trepidacious of him afore auricularly discerned what transpired and felt sympathy for him. “Mr. Donnegan was very nice when I came back and asked him for my old job of janitor. First he was very suspicious but I told him what happened

The operation on Algernon, the lab mouse, fades and he soon become a regular mouse with no great intelligence. Charlie’s intelligence deteriorates and like the mouse, Charlie goes back to the way he was before. Mr. Donnor, offered him his job back and he was glad to accept. Now that all the men at the Bakery knew why Charlie suddenly became smart, they treated him differently than before, with more respect. When Charlie went back to work there was a man, Meyer Klaus, who was very mean to him. His friends did not tolerate this well. “Joe Carp came in and grabbed Klaus by the shirt and said leave him alone you lousy bastard or Ill brake your neck. Charlie is a good guy and nobodys gonna start up with him without answering for it.” (Keyes 308) Charlie’s friends treated him poorly before, but once they knew the truth, they corrected their wrongs and made them right. Not only did Charlie’s friends change but when Charlie and his sister, Norma, reunited she no longer hated him, but loved him. Once most people know the truth, and come to accept it, they usually change for the better, but in this case Fay changed for the worse. Fay Lilliman was a woman who lived next door to Charlie’s apartment. Charlie and Fay became friends. Fay was unaware of Charlie’s operation and believed he had always been of normal intelligence. When Charlie’s operation declined so did their friendship. Fay no longer wanted to see Charlie because he was not a normal man, but a mentally challenged man. When the truth comes out society almost always changes. Sometimes it changes for the better and sometimes it changes for the

Strauss and Dr. Nemur read Charlie’s progress reports and saw how he did on the test, he took they decided to due the same surgery for Charlie as they did Algernon. After having the surgery, Charlie went through a series of a test with Mrs. Kinnian, Charlie’s night teacher, and he began to realize he was getting smarter and he re-read his old [progris riport] and realize he was spelling [progris riport] wrong and noticed that he had poor grammar punctuations, and wants to go back and change things, but Dr. Nemur says no. On April 20 Charlie starts to figure out what “pulling a Charlie Gordon” means and he doesn’t take it very well also, the people that Charlie calls his friends at work Charlie is figuring out that they are not his true friends and they just laugh at

Daniel Keyes science fiction novel, Flowers for Algernon, is about a man, Charlie Gordon, who is the subject for an experimental surgery to help raise his intelligence. The operation was highly successful for a lab mouse, Algernon, until his intelligence starts to rapidly decline. Unfortunately, the operation ended up being ineffective for Charlie Gordon as well. His IQ drops again and he does not understand what happened and can not remember anything he learned before. Charlie Gordon’s journey started with a surprisingly low IQ with hopes to gain intelligence, surpassing his doctor's intelligence and learning about himself, and ending with the operation failing and him being back to his old self.

It shows that intelligence doesn’t give you happiness or friends. As Charlie got smarter he became more selfish and more people began to dislike him.

After the surgery, Charlie mentally surpassed everyone around him, and because of that his relationships were still equally distant, if not more so. On page 121;124, Alice Kinnian states, “‘I mean it. There was something in you before. I don’t know … a warmth, an openness, a kindness that made everyone like you and like to have you around’ … ‘I have to state in the mirror and scream at myself: “No, you’re not growing duller every day! You’re not losing your intelligence! You’re not getting senile and dull-witted.”” Now, after Charlie got his intelligence, he is still not able to relate with anyone around him, because everyone is afraid of his superiority. Alice, the one who taught Charlie before his experiment, was the most affected of them all, because she felt as though she was becoming “the dumb one”. Charlie’s intelligence still posed a gap between him and his peers, but this time it was because he was so much smarter that he could not relate. Even at the bakery, this same problem posed itself. On page 106, it states, “‘I’ll tell you what you did, Mister Gordon. You come pushing in here with your ideas and suggestions and make the rest of us all look like a bunch of dopes.’ … I began to see that by my astonishing growth I had made them shrink and emphasized their inadequacies.” At the bakery, Frank got livid when Charlie had asked what he did wrong. Frank felt unusually inferior to the moron