Progress Report 13

Summary

Charlie is on his way to Chicago and believes that his feelings are more important, at this stage, than his mind. He is afraid of dying in a plane crash and thinks about God—an entity that was important to this mother but not to his father.

He remembers a time from when he was five years old and being taken to a doctor to help with his slow mental development. He undergoes shock therapy which petrifies him but he falls for the doctor’s kind words and assurance that he will become smarter.

Charlie’s father is a lot more concerned, loving and accepting of his son than his mother—who only wishes to make him smarter. This leads to a lot of arguments between the parents, over their son.

Charlie realizes that his desire to become smart came from his mother and his wish to be loved by her. He resents Professor Nemur for treating him like a guinea pig and for being god-like in his belief that he created the present Charlie.

Analysis

Charlie has a major breakthrough in understanding two fundamental aspects of his personality—he understands his desire to be smart comes from his mother’s desire for the same and he now knows why he is afraid of being tied down—on account of the shock therapy he received as a child.

Charlie is able to now not only access his memories but also control them and understand himself a lot better.

June 11

Summary

Charlie arrives in Chicago and is the center of attention, which annoys Professor Nemur. To please the professor, Charlie does his best to turn the focus onto him since he craves it so much. As Nemur gets into the intricacies of Charlie’s mental deficiencies and how he was able to fix them, Charlie trumps him with more detailed knowledge of neurological specifics. He is cut short by Nemur who Dr Strauss explains, is feeling inferior.

Charlie decides that both the doctors are frauds and do not know much about their fields. He walks out and catches Burt following him. Burt explains that while Charlie has attained tremendous knowledge he still lacks understanding and tolerance. Charlie thinks that he is neither a genius nor was he a retard prior to his surgery; he is merely exceptional.

While Charlie understands the limitations of the men who have brought him to his current situation in life, he is terrified to be in the hands of simple folk who are not the intellectual giants he had assumed them to be.

Analysis

Charlie is now able to manipulate other people and understand their emotions; however, he struggles with accepting them for who they are. He is questioning life, existence and the importance of being alive but he is also beginning to become aware that these are deep philosophical ideas and not easily understood by regular people.

The biggest change in Charlie’s life has been that he considered everyone else smarter than him and now he is aware that he is the smartest person he knows.

June 13

Summary

Charlie has walked out of the Chicago convention and is heading back to New York alone. At the convention, he toyed with the idea of releasing Algernon from his cage and received withheld information that Algernon, post his surgery, often behaved erratically.

Charlie is annoyed by the video presentations of the time when he was a complete retard and is upset by the laughter of the audience. He controls an impulse to release Algernon again and listens to Dr Strauss’s scientific understandings of Charlie’s progress.

Charlie is very upset at Professor Nemur’s comment that Charlie did not really exist before his surgery; he also finds a major fault in their experiment on him—their conclusions were false in assuming that the changes in Algernon and him would stick, because both the man and the mouse had shown more than normal progress in their intellectual development.

Charlie frees Algernon from his cage and in the resultant chaos, escapes with Algernon and returns to New York. He decides to find and meet his parents.

Analysis

Charlie makes a huge realization that his intelligence may not be a permanent change—he is able to find the error in the scientists’ experiment that none of them were able to spot.

Charlie also begins to show signs of wanting individual freedom, for both the mouse Algernon and himself, and hence, escapes from the convention to start a life independent of the doctors he has spent most of his time with, lately.