Flowers For Algernon: Artificial Smartness

It is possible to live without intelligence. Intelligence is important but if you don't have it, then it is fine. You can try to become intelligent by being yourself, but there is no need for getting surgery to get smarter. Charlie shouldn’t have gotten the surgery. He was living happily. He wasn't sad about anything, so he wouldn't need to go through any stress.

Once Charlie is at the peak of his intelligence, he starts regressing. He then writes a report to try and figure out what went wrong with the operation, so maybe he can fix it and stay a genius, or maybe if he can’t help himself, at least know what went wrong so he can prevent future operations from failing, too. He writes the Algernon-Gordon Effect, which states that human-made intelligence deteriorates at a rate of time directly proportional to the quantity of the increase. On page 333, he says, “These and my people. Let me use my gift to do something for them.” Charlie mentions that he is the only person who had both been smart and dumb in the world. Therefore, he is more knowledgeable than everyone who is working in this field. He will now be able to work out problems with the procedures so they can use it for many people, and make other people in Charlie’s predicament smarter. Other people may say, “Charlie just became stupid again, so what’s the point in the procedure? They just gave him what he wanted his whole life, only to have it forcefully taken away from him, and he could do nothing.” This is a valid point, but I believe that Charlie gets what he wants, so who cares if he becomes stupid again. All of his life, he wants to become smart, and he gets this chance through

After the surgery, Charlie’s mind thought completely different than what it had before the A.I. surgery, obviously,

In the short story, "Flowers for Algernon" by Daniel Keyes, Charlie Gordon is a 37 year-old man who has learning disabilities, with an I.Q. of 34. Charlie wants to be smarter. Charlie is tested for an operation that will increase his intelligence artificially. His doctors offer him this operation before they know how it fully affects the lab rat, Algernon, who is being watched for effects after having the same surgery. Charlie Gordon's doctors did not act ethically when they performed the surgery to make him smarter. They should have waited to see the full effects of the surgery on Algernon. They also should have identified that Charlie's I.Q. made him incapable of making a decision if the surgery was safe for him. The doctors did

All Charlie thought was that he would be smart because that's all the doctors convinced him of. In “Flowers for Algernon,” on page 201 the doctors said, “Charlie you're going to have a second chance. If you volunteer for this experiment you might get smart.” Charlie trusted the doctors because they said he was going to become smart and that is all Charlie has ever wanted. He just wants to be like everyone else. In other words they didn't really tell Charlie what was going on. They just said Charlie you might be smart and that's all they had to tell Charlie to get him to volunteer. Someone like Charlie should not be able to decide whether or not they have a life changing surgery that may or may not give them what they

Before the procedure, when Charlie’s IQ was sixty eight, he took a Rorschach test. A Rorschach is a psychology test where you are given a picture of an inkblot and have to tell what you see in it. Charlie could not see anything, but not even a month after the surgery Charlie saw all sorts of things. For example Charlie says “One of them looked like a pair of bats tugging at something. Another one looked like to men fencing with swords. I imagined all sorts of things.” (Keyes 232). This clearly illustrates that Charlie saw many things in the Rorschach because of his imagination. The aftermath of the surgery was very posotive because he finally didn’t fail, got to use his creativity and feel self

We believe that Charlie should not have undergone the surgery because of the extremely negative after-effects it imposed on his brain. To start of with, Charlie is introduced as a man with mental instability who is teased and not happy with how disabled he his. “Miss Kinnian says maybe they can make me smart. I want to be smart. My name is Charlie Gordon. I am 37 years old.” Charlie is a grown man who is not as smart as everyone around him. He desperately wants to be smart and to be treated like normal. Drs. Strauss and Nemur decide to use him in an experimental surgery that will hopefully make him much more intelligent than he is.

surgery also allowed Charlie to see the world from a brand new perspective. Prior to raising his I.Q. Charlie only saw the simplistic parts of the world, After tripling his I.Q. though he was able to see the world from a new point of view. This change was like looking at a wall, and then seeing every molecule and atom that makes up that wall. The book shows some of his “discoveries” in the quote “How strange it is that people of honest feelings and sensibility who would not take advantage of a man born without arms, or legs, or eyes- how such people think nothing of abusing a man born with low intelligence.” (Keyes 237) With this surgery, Charlie was able to gain awareness of the world, and the bullying around him. Without this surgery Charlie would have lived the rest of his life as a walking joke to those around him.

So, without the surgery he probably would not have gotten where he was with an IQ of 204 starting at only 68 in a matter of weeks. “What a dope I am! I didn’t even understand what she was talking about. I read the grammar book last night and it explanes the whole thing.”(Keyes page 192). People tend to think that this dream come true does not override the fact that a side effect of his decreasing intelligence is that he died. While dying is not a good thing alone it does not strain from the fact that he died finally achieving something that he spent his whole life trying to reach. So, instead of dying from a life searching but never really achieving. He died a life where he succeeded his dream. Other people say that this human sacrifice was unsafe and that no one knows about it since even the doctors told Charlie not to tell anyone that he was getting the surgery. Well, that is not true. “All human exposure studies conducted by EPA scientists are independently evaluated for safety and ethics, and the results are peer-reviewed. EPA is committed to ensuring the protection of study participants.” (Watchdog: EPA human test subjects not always told about lethal risks of studies, page 32). So not only was it safe but, it was also evaluated by other

How would you feel about undergoing a procedure to grant you intelligence immediately? Charlie Gordon in Daniel Keyes, “Flowers for Algernon” has the chance to skyrocket to high intelligence by going through a life changing operation. Charlie Gordon is a 37 year old who wears glasses and attends a night school for adults. Charlie is a unintelligent adult with a learning disability. His teacher, Ms. Kinnian, discovers an opportunity for him to withstand an operation to generate intelligence, will he do it? Will Charlie put his life in danger just for intelligence? Despite Charlie’s unintelligence, he is a dynamic and intriguing protagonist. Throughout the story, Charlie proves that experiments can change a person and he takes us on his unforgettable complex journey to show us how he changed.

Charlie actually knows that he did something important by stating “Anyway I bet I'm the first dumb person in the world who found out something important for science. 245” The fact that he knows he did something important shows that he learned from the experience. Charlie even developed his own theory that helped people in the community. “ARTIFICIALLY-INDUCED INTELLIGENCE DETERIORATES AT A RATE OF TIME DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL TO THE QUANTITY OF THE INCREASE 240” If Charlie did not write this theory, the doctors would of kept trying to make him

Would you go through surgery to improve your intelligence? In the story Flower for Algernon, Charlie Gordon did just this. Now, this really didn’t work out for him. This test emotionally effected him. It worsened his life in many ways, such as these ones.

The doctors did not plan ahead and it did not work forever and it only lasted a short period of time. The effects killed Algernon as well as he started getting dumber and not wanting to eat. Charlie's intelligence stated waring off and he became dumb again as he could see his progress reports did not make sense anymore and the grammar and spelling changed. While it is true the doctors had made some mistakes Charlie actually got to experience life while being smart he gained a lot of it and so did the doctors .Charlie Gordons doctors acted ethically when they preformed the surgery to make him intelligent

He also managed to change his perspective of people and the world around him. For example, previously with Miss Kinnian, he viewed her unreachable genius and very old. Although, after Charlie has become much more intelligent, he see Miss Kinnian as beautiful, unlike before. “I don’t understand why I never noticed how beautiful Miss Kinnian is...Now everytime I see her she grows younger and more lovely.”(Page 47) This shows how the surgery has impacted his view of people positively. Another example is how he experiences new things. For inference, when he read an in depth book that he couldn’t understand before.”We are reading a very hard book. I never read such a hard book before. Its called Robinson Crusoe about a man who gets merooned on a dessert Iland.”(Page 41) Charlie, because he is now not mentally retarded anymore, is able to understand more difficult books that we read everyday on a daily basis. It is all owed to the procedure that Charlie is able to change his viewpoints and experience things that formerly was impossible to

I do not think Charlie should have had the surgery because his life got worse and his life got way harder after the surgery. The book flower of Algernon is about a 37-year-old named charlie who is super kind who is special ed and he then got to become smart by taking a surgery and he would get paid and so everything sounded good because he could spell words right but then when he found out that he would be losing this smartness and found out he will be back to the same part but he will be weaker and angrier. I think that charlie should not have taken this surgery because he became angrier, he became weaker and even though he got smart he still lost how to spell later in his life.