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Research Paper On Flowers For Algernon

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Flowers for Algernon is about a 32 year old man named Charlie Gordon who has a mental disability. He was abandoned by his parents when he was a child. Charlie’s parents sent him away to Warren State Home, which is a place for retarded people who can not live on their own. Charlie started to attend Beekman University, where there was a special program for retarded adults. One day, two scientists, Professor Nemur and Dr. Strauss, came to Charlie’s teacher, Alice Kinnian. They came up with an experiment to make retarded people smart, and they wanted to use Charlie in the experiment. Charlie wanted to be smart, so he encouraged the scientists to use him in the experiment, even though Miss Kinnian was not fond of using Charlie in the experiment. (Keyes, 2004) Before the operation could occur, Charlie went through a series of tests to see what he knew and could think of. One of the tests involved a mouse named Algernon, who went through the same operation that Charlie was getting ready to go through. Algernon was a smart mouse, and Charlie had to try to beat him in a race through a maze. Algernon won every time, and Charlie began to hate the mouse. After all the tests, Professor Nemur and Dr. Strauss decided Charlie would be great to use in the experiment. The two scientists told Charlie to write everyone he could think of, and they called them progress reports. At the beginning of the book, Charlie’s progress reports have many misspelled words and improper grammar. After the

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