Character Analysis Of Charlie Gordon From Flowers For Algernon

Charlie’s friendship with Jasper Jones, his parents, and witnessing the intolerance of Corrigan are the three biggest factors in Charlie's development from innocence to experience. Jasper Jones exposed him to fear and forced him to be brave and face his fears, the rampant intolerance in Corrigan, both racial and otherwise, exposed him to the injustices of the real world, and his relationship with his parents taught him to be diplomatic and control his

How does Charlie change through the course of the novel? How different is he from the person he is at the beginning of the novel to how he is at the end? Do you consider then novels end to be tragic or inspiring? How so?

Character development is the core for Daniel Keyes endeavor to convey themes to his audience by developing the character of Charlie Gordon. One way to develop his character is through relationships with other characters, which is critical in conveying the themes in the book. Another way through which Keyes develops Charlie Gordon’s character for his audience is through letting in the audience on the thoughts of the character in the book so they get on a ride with his emotion, conflict, and dilemmas. Flowers for Algernon illustrates how cruel the society treats the mentally disabled with the use of literary elements. Daniel Keyes conveys the message that the grass is not always greener on the other side through character development.

“Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.” - Harriet Tubman. Charlie Gordon is a very welcoming, playful, and genuine man. He attends Beekman College for Retarded Adults and has a strong motivation to learn and to improve his intelligence. He dreams of being popular, and making friends. Throughout the novel Flowers for Algernon, Charlie Gordon changed in many ways. Prior to his life changing operation, he was not able to grasp that the people at Donner’s Bakery were not his friends, they only spoke to him to make fun of him. Charlie acknowledged their harsh actions, and started retaliating. Charlie is a very open

“My exit from the window is a little like a foal being born. It's a graceless and gangly drop, directly onto my mother's gerbera bed”(Silvey 2). He decides to leave his house in the middle of the night to follow Jasper Jones into the woods. This is courageous because he knows that it probably isn't safe, and he knows that he might get caught, but he is helping someone out who looks really distressed. Helping someone in need despite the consequences takes courage. Right after that, he discovered that Jasper found a dead body at his camp in the woods. “It is a girl and she is in a dirty cream lace nightdress. She is pale. In the silver light I can see she bears scratches down her arms. And her calves. And her face is smudged and bruised and bloody. And she is hanging by the neck from a thick rope tied to a bough of a silver eucalyptus tree”(Silver 10). Charlie could have run away, he could have forgotten everything that he had just seen, but he didn't. Once again, he decided to help Jasper when he was needing it, and helped solve Laura’s mystery. He could have died, but he still helped Jasper. That takes real

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.

Also Charlie is one of the most menial kids around he would never go with Jasper if he didn’t have courage. All of the choices Charlie makes impact his life in some way for example; if he didn’t go with Jasper his life would be normal, but because of one simple decision his life changed forever with the fact that he hid a body hovering over him at all times.

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

Charlie should have chosen to have had the operation because he got to achieve his ultimate dream, he got to form new relationships, and he was able to contribute new information to others; One argument that can be made for why it was beneficial for Charlie to have the surgery is because he got to live out his dream. Prior to having the IQ increasing procedure done to him, Charlie, was an optimistic and good-hearted man. Unfortunately for Charlie though he was disabled and had a low IQ, this caused Charlie to dream of becoming smart and fit in with others. One quote that can support the claim that Charlie got to achieve his dream of becoming smart is, “Im glad I got a second chanse to be smart becaus I lerned alot of things that I never new were in this world and Im grateful that I saw it all for a littel bit (245).

In the short story of Flowers for Algernon, Charlie’s personality changes throughout the book. Although Charlie’s personality changes from the beginning to the end are small a lot has happened to allow those changes. Well, just like in real life, certain events can change you and things about you in many ways just like how events in Charlie’s life changed him and his Personality. In the short story of FFA there are many quotes that explains how Charlie changes from beginning to end. At the beginning of the novel Charlie had trouble spelling, using punctuation, and hearing others clearly.

Before surgery his spelling was off and it did not really make sense, after surgery his spelling was much better than the before spelling, this is from the study guide. He has always wanted to be smart because he thought he would be able to fit in with other people, in my opinion. A quote would be, “I wish it would reely work alredy so I coud get smart like evrybody else”, -Charlie. An example would be someone who has downsyndrome that has not so good handwriting.

At the start of the book Charlie has been born with an unusually rare defect with an iq of 68 with a 1% chance of happening from birth and that same iq skyrocketed, and changed to an iq of 185 that has a 1 in 18,457,107 chance of happening from birth. Charlie iq caused many family problems throughout his childhood because Charlie's mom Rose disliked charlie for being this way in result she forced his husband Matt to put Charlie in a school for retarded people. A professor of psychology at Beekman University, named Nemur took Charlie to be used as an experiment to find out if he can increase his intelligence. It turns out that the experiment does work with great success and it has benefited Charlie’s life by a lot but it turns out the experiment

Charlie was doing this all just for the liking of his friends , unknown to him , he was just chasing them away . Another defect of Charlie's super intelligence was that he was fired from his job of the boxing company . " You used to be a good , dependable , ordinary man-not too bright maybe , but honest . Who knows what you done to yourself to get so smart all of a sudden . Like everybody around here's been saying , Charlie , it's not right . "

Throughout the novel Charlie’s personality and intelligence level changes a lot. In the beginning Charlie is happy, has friends, he’s retarded, and can’t remember a lot of things. “I fergot his last name because I dont remebir so good.” (Keyes 2),

Both of these examples from this story show that Charlie’s actions are what make him intelligent. He uses the operation to enhance this, but uses his actions to develop a mind full of