Flowers For Algernon

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),

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

After Charlie goes through the surgery to improve his intelligence, he begins to see the world as it truly is. Charlie is not very intelligent. He is aware of his mental deficit and wants to become smart. When asked about the reason he wants the surgery, Charlie states, “I told them becaus all my life I wantid to be smart and not dumb (Keyes 286). Charlie, “Cant wait to be smart like my best frends Joe Carp and Frank Reilly (Keyes 290).” Therefore, he was not satisfied with his life before the surgery. Furthermore, Charlie’s mental deficit makes him not very smart about his relationships with his coworkers. He is unaware that his coworkers make fun of him. At first, Charlie believes, “Their really my friends and they like me” (Keyes 289). Others, however, realize that the coworkers aren’t treating Charlie well. Referring to his kind teacher, Charlie says, “I said all my frends are smart people but there good. They like me and they never did anything that wasnt nice. Then she got something in her eye and she had to run out to the ladys room” (Keyes 291). After the surgery, Charlie comes to understand people more and to understand what is a true friend. Charlie later learns, “Now I know what it means when they say ‘to pull a Charlie Gordon.’ I'm ashamed” (Keyes 293). Charlie also sees his doctors in a new light when he says, “It was as if I'd

As stated above, this humiliation that he has been experiencing has caused him to lose his confidence in himself. This is proved when Charlie writes about his conversation with Miss Kinnian. He writes: “I tried to make a conversation with Miss Kinnian but no matter how much I tried to talk at the same level as her I always brought up psychology in the process. I am having great difficulty in making friends.” This quote proves that after the surgery that Charlie took to triple his intelligence made him find it difficult to make friends after he became aware of this humiliation that he has been experiencing. It

He is therefore is a very different person. He no longer innocently gawks at people who are mean to him. He is able to have a decent conversation with others, and continues to be very analytical. Due to these personality traits and changes, at this point Charlie is ISFJ on the MBTI scale. This is shown when Charlie is consoling himself about his feelings for Mrs. Kinnian and he remarks, “I kept telling myself that the sweating palms, the tightness in my chest, the desire to put my arms around her were merely biochemical reactions.” (Keyes 95) He is analyzing his feelings and then taking action in a way that he never would have before the operation. With his new-found intelligence, Charlie realizes things about people and subjects that change who he is as a person. The flood of newfound knowledge makes him act differently around other people and think differently. Charlie also is now introverted and spends much of his time at the library and reading

Charlie experiences drastic changes throughout the story. All of them are mentally due to the experimental operation he had. In the

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.

Throughout the novel, the Character Charlie Bucktin has been constructed to highlight how innocence can shield us from the true corruption and immorality present in the world around us. In the beginning, Charlie represents innocence and obliviousness, traits that at the time came naturally to a ‘well off’ middle class white Australian. Silvey has constructed Charlie to be well read and well educated, a trait which in turn allowed him to view society in a way far beyond the era he lived in; in a way Charlie represents the change and non-discriminatory outlook to come in future years. However, because of his well-sheltered background, Charlie remains for the most part,

Charlie’s friends even take advantage of how nice he is. They always make him the root of their jokes. When Charlie asks a barber shop owner to move his illegally parked car, the owner laughs at him and just throws him the keys to the car and tells him to move it himself. The whole town takes advantage of Charlie though, not only his friends. In the supermarket a woman asks to cut in front of him inline and then ends up having a cart full of groceries. This is Charlies breaking point. He starts tensing up, you can tell something is happening. All of a sudden he starts talking in a different voice, and finds vagaclean in the woman’s cart that cut in front of him. So to take his anger out on her he gets on the store microphone and announces she has vagaclean in her cart. We learn this new personalities name when he is drowning a young girl in the water fountain who disobeyed him earlier. When the girl says she is going to tell her father on him, he announces that he is Hank. After this change in personality he starts going

Originally published in 1959 as a science fiction short story for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, the novel Flowers for Algernon by an American writer Daniel Keyes is more relevant today than at that time. With more than five million copies in print, this book with its great depth of meaning is still considered to be the most acclaimed author‘s work.

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?

It is only in the final moments of his intelligence that Charlie begins to forgive his family and receive love. If Charlie wasn’t so curious, and never had a taste of what he thought the light might bring, all good, then every harsh reality check that Charlie had to endure throughout the novella, might have been avoided.

Eventually, Mary Elizabeth forgives him. It is about time for Sam, Patrick, and his sister to graduate and for his favorite teacher to leave. Charlie starts to wonder how he will cope with the loss of his friends yet again. Then, he learns of the hidden horrors of his childhood and becomes indisposed with the knowledge of his molestation. Charlie is sent to a hospital where he gets help in rediscovering who he is. Following his release, Charlie is much better at creating relationships and is more hopeful for the

- In this scene, Charlie knows that his IQ is decreasing because his memories are starting to fade away.

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