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Flowers For Algernon: Mental Disabilities

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Flowers For Algernon: An Exploration Into The Stigma Against Mental Disabilities

In the mid to late 20th century a story swept across the nation challenging societal beliefs surrounding the mentally disabled: this story is know as Flowers for Algernon. Flowers For Algernon began as a short story, written in 1958 by Daniel Keyes, but after it gained popularity, Keys decided to turn the story into a novel which he then published in 1966. Up until the creation of this book, cognitive disabilities had been a taboo topic which American society avoided addressing due to their lack of knowledge and residual discomfort surrounding the subject. Flowers for Algernon directly challenged this intentional ignorance through the creation an entire story …show more content…

This experiment has only been done on a lab rat named Algernon before. Charlie is the first human to receive the procedure, and as the weeks go by, his IQ gets higher and higher. Flowers For Algernon gained notoriety not only for its subject matter but for the way in which it is written as well. The novel is a first person narrative in the style of diary entries. In the beginning, Charlie’s “progris riports” are full of grammatical and spelling errors and they are lacking almost all punctuation. However throughout the novel, his cognitive progress is visually apparent as his writings become more grammatically correct and the overall subject matter of what he says is spoken in an increasingly intelligent manner. At the climax of the novel, Charlie reaches an IQ of 185 and it is at this time that he reflects on his past life and has a new insight into the way he was treated and abuse he endured due to the fact that he was born with a cognitive disability. Flowers for algernon was written as a political statement to both expose the stigma against mental disabilities and simultaneously bring attention to the discrimination people …show more content…

Charlie’s childhood was filled with both mental and physical abuse due to his mother who wanted a “normal” son. Whenever he would get scared, he would not be able to control his urination, which resulted in a spanking from his mother, Rose Gordon. Moreover, when Charlie got an erection in public, his mother threatened to beat the filth out of his mind and lock him up like the animal that he is. Charlie was victim to mental abuse as well, including his mother allowing his sister, Norma, to tell her friends that he was adopted and that they weren't actually related. In his previous mental state, Charlie was unable to understand his family’s distance and constant anger towards him. However, when reflecting on his past with his newfound intelligence he writes,
“Now I can see where I got the unusual motivation for becoming smart that so amazed everyone at first. It was something Rose Gordon lived with day and night. Her fear, her guilt, her shame the Charlie was a moron. Her dream that something could be done. The urgent question always: whose fault was it hers or [her husband’s]? Only after Norma proved to her that she was capable of having normal children, and that I was a freak, did she stop trying to make me over. But I guess I never stopped wanting to be the smart boy she wanted me to be, so that she would love me,”

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