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Daniel Keyess science fiction story “Flowers for Algernon” is about a 37-year-old man that was born with a lack of intelligence. He has always been teased and made fun of for his problem. As an adult, he chooses to go to a night school taught by Miss Kinnian to learn. He doesn't learn much but is chosen to undergo a risky never before done surgery. The surgery promises to triple his IQ of 68 but it may not be permanent. Charlie chooses to undergo the surgery to full fill his lifetime goal and to be able to make true friends. The surgery goes will and Charlie progressively gains intelligence. Charlie seems to be very happy being smart but then one day he gets fired from work. His co-workers don't want him there because of how smart he has gotten. …show more content…
Strauss says, with three times my IQ of 68, then maybe I'll be like everyone else and people will like me and be friendly.” (Progress report 11) This proves that Charlie wanted to be smart because the people around him didn't like him. These people would make fun of him because he wasn't as smart as they were. That ended up pushing Charlie to want to become intelligent and change who he already was. Charlie also faced other forms of discrimination and acceptance even after he gained his intelligence. After Charlie became smart people were too scared to talk to him because of how smart and how fast he had gained it. A second quote from the story that proves this theme is when Charlie said, “Once again now I have the feeling of shame burning inside me. This intelligence has driven a wedge between me and all the people I once knew and loved. Before, they laughed at me and despised me for my ignorance and dullness; now, they hate me for my knowledge and understanding. What in God's name do they want of me?” (Progress Report 12) That shows how at first the people didn't like Charlie because of how low his IQ was but now even after he is a genius they still don't like him. They are making Charlie start to regret his decision about having the surgery and are making him start to have doubts about who he is as a person. Through Charlie's co-workers making fun of him and not accepting him at first they have pushed him to want to be smart just like them. And now they have gotten him fired from his job because of how smart he is. Now you can clearly tell that the theme that appears in the story as by not accepting someone you may end up pushing them to change and do something they may regret later.But that's not the only time the other showed this theme in his
In the beginning Charlie had very bad mental problems, he didn't have the experience everyone had. He couldn't spell well, talk well, etc. After he decided with Miss Kinnian to get the surgery he started getting smarter and smarter. Towards the end he lost his job and his girlfriend. After that he started slacking and then he went from getting smarter and smarter to getting dumber and dumber to a point where he got worse than he was before. I found the end of the book inspiring because no matter how smart you get if you start slacking and never go back to trying again you life can go upside
To start, it is a good feeling to feel normal and everyone should feel that way. In the story, Charlie wants to be smarter and Dr. Strauss can do that for him. Charlie wants to be smarter so he can just be normal like other people. The thought of his I.Q. being tripled was amazing to him. At one point in the story Dr. Nemur said,“remember he will be the first human being ever to have his intelligence tripled by surgical means” (page 518). Anyone who has wanted just to be normal would understand what Charlie was feeling. If Charlie didn’t have the operation he would not be able to experience the benefit of being normal.
Before the operation, he exhibited some clear strengths such as determination, a positive attitude, friendly with people and some weaknesses such as education and inability to understand the adult world. After the operation, he begun to change in numerous ways. Charlie started out as being not really intelligent. Being around with “smart” people made him want to change and became “intelligent” just like his “friends.” I think its all crazy. If you can get smart when your sleeping why do people go to school. That thing I don't think will work. I use to watch the late show and the late late show on TV all the time and it never made me smart (Keyes 118). This part of the book led Charlie’s flashbacks takes place of how he was raised or nurtured through his childhood, Of how he wanted to try to become smart. However Dr. Strauss believes that his sleep would help Charlie be able to learn. However in his nature, his disability cannot help him at all, doesn’t matter how much he tries to watch TV and tries to go to sleep, I wouldn’t allow him to learn anything at all. The nurture of this is having the doctor recommend Charlie to do this. His disability also not just affects him but his family as well. His disability kind of makes his sister miserable as well, jealous over how the parents focus on Charlie due to his disability, despite the successes the sister achieves in school. Thus Charlie’s nature towards others has a negative effect which is towards his sister. Charlie was raised by his parents but through a condition that would then follow him probably for the rest of his life as well as being mainly raised through this experiment, which possibly wouldn’t help him at all in the near
He is then judged even harsher which is why you shouldn’t try to be someone that you’re not. You should stay true to yourself. In the story, it says “Their going to use me! I am so exited I can hardly write” (Keyes page 351). This implies that Charlie is anxious to undergo the surgery that will make him smart. Another part says “If you volenteer for this experament you mite get smart”. (Keyes page 351) This shows that the operation will make him more intelligent so he can fit in with everyone else. This proves that Charlie is trying to be someone he is not in order to fit
Charlie’s story began with the surgery, the biggest decision he made in his life. Although he was a guinea pig in the procedure, he wasn’t worried at all about the surgery, but rather on becoming smart as fast as he could. Supposedly these doctors were doing Charlie the greatest favor he would ever receive, and he was so eager to learn as much as he could. Soon however, Charlie would encounter challenges he never faced with the intelligence of a 6 year old. Before his surgery, Charlie had great friends in Miss Kinnian and the bakery workers. After the surgery the relationships between Charlie and everyone he knew would take a drastic turn.
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes is a work that draws from the biblical tale of the Garden of Eden. Daniel Keyes manages to renew the story as his own while still using the same theme and plot. In Flowers for Algernon a grown man, named Charlie Gordon, who has learning disabilities gets an operation to make him smarter. After the operation is complete Charlie goes through the process of learning at an excelled rate and learns many things, some of which are good, and some of which he would be better off not knowing. However, in the end the operation is not permanent and Charlie loses his gained intelligence.
.... As his intelligence advances, Charlie becomes aggressive and hostile after realizing how he was taken for granted. He can no longer tolerate his former coworkers, because he still remembers the humiliation at their hands. His friends at the factory become threatened by his new personality and growing intelligence, and petition to fire him out of the factory. This led to Charlie becoming isolated and lonely. Once Charlie became a genius, he became a little arrogant and even egotistical. This, in turn, makes him lose his friends and all of his happiness in his simple life. Because his progress reports are written in first point of view, you can infer how his personality changed from amiable to hostile. At the end, he hopes someone will continue and fix the error in Dr. Nemur and Strauss's experiment. From this, you can conclude that what he is writing is the truth.
The scientists finally decide Charlie is the perfect subject for the experiment due to his motivation and his eagerness to be smart. As Charlie's IQ begins to grow, so does his ability to understand how cruel the world around him really is. While Charlie's knowledge grows, his attitude changes along with those around him. Charlie loses his job, friends, happiness, and even his willingness to care or learn. On the contrary, Charlie also experiences and learns a lot from this experiment.
In the novel, beginning from the first paragraph, Charlie’s intentions are clear; he wishes to become intelligent above anything. Within the very first progress journal Charlie describes his willingness to become intelligent. “All my life I wantid to be smart and not dumb and my mom always tolld me to try …but its very hard to be smart and even when I lern … at the school I ferget alot." (Keyes 4). Charlie indicates his eagerness to become intelligent began ever since he was little yet, his weak memory holds him back, but nonetheless being smart is his one goal. Also when Charlie is talking about why he wants to become intelligent he reveals he believes becoming smart will bring him friends to keep him company. He reports, “if your smart you can have lots of frends to talk to and you never get lonley by yourself all the time.” (15). Charlie believes being smart is the key to popularity and gaining friends who will want to spend time with him, therefore becoming intelligent for him is the key to happiness. In addition when the professor reminds Charlie all the fame he could acquire if he was successful reminds he shakes it off. He reflects “I dont care so much about beeing famus. I just want to be smart like other pepul so I c...
Therefore, Even though Charlie becomes mentally retarded by the end, he becomes a more complete person. Charlie undergoes a lot of changes during his journey. He matures which contributes to his intelligence growth, learns significant life lesson, and realizes that he is better of being mentally retarded rather than a genius. Charlie does not realize the fact that after becoming a genius, he is as far away from his goal of being normal and fitting in as he is being mentally retarded.
Before Charlie’s surgery, his coworkers took advantage of his low intelligence, which he realized on page ____, where it says “Everybody was laughing. Frank said, ‘I ain’t laughed so much since we sent him off for the newspaper that night at Muggsy’s and ditched him.’ … I didn’t know what to do or where to turn… I wanted to hide myself… Now I know what it means when they say ‘to pull a Charlie Gordon.’” He unfortunately did not realize that his “friends” were making fun of him due to the fact that they had taken advantage of his low intelligence and set up a weak cover for each prank or crack, making them seem like they were laughing with him in his perspective. He had judged them for what they seemed on the outside, which reiterates the theme. After his post-surgery regression, though, they stood up for him after thinking about their actions. This is shown on page ____, where it says “
Before Charlie became smart, even the simplest things in life were good enough for him. As a genius, none of those things mattered to him. His mind was more complex, he needed more and he wanted more. As a result, he felt alone and buried himself in his work.
The majority of people assume that a surgery that would cost thousands of dollars would be beneficial but in the Flowers of Algernon, written by Daniel not everything goes as planned. Daniel’s story Flowers for Algernon is about a man named Charlie Gordon who is a 37 years old. He has multiple problems with brain. He is very nice and thinks all his friends like him. He goes to a hospital every week to visit a doctor named Ms.Kinnamon to help him read, write and spell better. Charlie was one day brought in the hospital to race a smart mouse named Algernon. Algeron would also beat him in the race until he finally practiced enough to beat him. He worked at a factory and would clean for a living. Charlie liked his peers and his work but in reality they were all making fun of him. The doctors at the hospital wanted to do surgery on his brain to help him with his disabilities and he ended up doing it, but they were many side effects; Forgetting how to read and write well, heavy depression and realizing reality.
Before Charlie had the operation preformed on him, he had friends at the bakery he worked at. They were not really his friends because they always made jokes about Charlie, but he was not smart enough to realize it. As he gets smarter he loses his friends because they think he is just trying to act smart.
Charlie worked at a factory and saved the factory ten thousand dollars of work and made the products more efficient. He changed the way the machines are set up in the factory that saves them thousands of dollars and required less work. Charlie understood the concept of the factories and was able to make improvements. The operation was supposed to increase Charlie’s IQ and that is what he was hoping would happen. Charlie’s spelling and grammar improves throughout his progress reports and his IQ dramatically improved from a sixty-eight to two hundred. Charlie wanted to become smart and improve his English after the surgery and that is exactly what happened. Charlie is so fascinated with how the procedure on the brain worked that he wanted to improve the way they did the intelligence surgery. Charlie then discovered new knowledge of the function and the increase of human intelligence. Charlie's wisdom was so high, he was able to uncover important discoveries of the complex human mind. The procedure affected Charlie and increased his skills and brilliance.