Is becoming smart always better than staying dumb? After considering Charlie’s situation, I have decided that the answer to this question is no. Charlie is the main character in the science fiction story Flowers for Algernon written by Daniel Keyes. In the book, Charlie is a 37 year old man who has an I.Q. of 68 and is on a mission to become smart. When the opportunity comes for him to participate in an experiment for an operation that can triple his I.Q., he willingly takes it. It turns out that the operation only grants a temporary intelligence boost, and Charlie experiences high intelligence only to have it start deteriorating. I think that Charlie was wrong to have the operation that temporarily made him smart.
The first reason why I think this is that the operation makes Charlie realize how mean his friends were and loses them, causing him to feel bad. For example, on page 209 it says, “It’s a funny thing I never knew that Joe and Frank and the others liked to have me around all the time to make fun of me,” and later Charlie says, “I’m ashamed,” which shows how realizing the truth about Joe and Frank makes him feel.
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This causes him to move away into an uncertain future. For example, on page 212 he says, “I’ve quit my job with Donnegan’s Plastic Box Company,” and to explain why he says, “The first I knew of it was when Mr. Donnegan showed me the petition. Eight hundred and forty names, everyone connected with the factory, except Fanny Girden. Scanning the list quickly, I saw at once that hers was the only missing name. All the rest demanded that I be fired.” On page 223, Charlie says, “That’s why I’m going away from New York for good,” which states Charlie’s decision to move
The societal problems became a reality for Charlie as he overtook the brain of a genius. Every day, Charlie woke up thinking he was best friends with Joe and Frank; nonetheless, after the operation, Charlie’s brilliance knew Frank and Joe were not his legitimate cohorts. All the mocking was assumed to be friendly until Charlie was able to comprehend the actuality. Charlie’s acquaintances turned around
He was much happier before the operation. The situations were the same before. But, after the operation, he had started noticing the obstacles. Joe and Frank used to tease Charlie before, but now he was ashamed and realized that they had befriended him to make fun of him. He now started noticing the wicked incidents in his surrounding and started to compare them to his life. He became lonely after he got fired from his job. His life had become a track lane with obstacles all along the way after he became intelligent. Intelligence does not always lead to happiness. The story “Flowers for Algernon” proves that ignorance is
"Can You Make Yourself Smarter? Written by Dan Hurley first published in 2011 in The New York Times newspaper described ways to increase fluid intelligence, which allows people to manipulate data and solve problems.
And therein lies the tale. Charlie does indeed get smarter. He struggles to absorb as much knowledge as he can in whatever time he has. He suggests a new way to line up the machines at the factory, saving the owner tens of thousands of dollars a year in operating costs, and the owner gives him a $25 bonus. But when Charlie suggests to his factory friends that he could use his bonus to treat them to lunch or a drink, they have other things to do.
Joe Carp and Frank Reilly are Charlie’s coworkers who often make fun of Charlie because of his low IQ. Charlie figured he could resolve this by becoming smarter, so he undergoes an experiment and becomes smarter. Instead of them liking him more, they feared him. Charlie thinks that if he changes and tries to become someone new that he will have lots of friends. He thinks he will have a normal life, like everyone that he works with at Donegan's plastic box company. In the story, the text states “Then Frank Reilly said what did you do Charlie forget your key and open your door the hard way. That made me laff. Their really my friends and they like me” (Keyes page 354). This shows that his coworkers are mean to him but he doesn’t notice and he just wants to be their friends. The story also said, “All the rest demanded I be fired” (Keyes page 336) and this means that his coworkers didn’t want to work
The experiment starts to work and Charlie gets smarter and he starts realizing new things. Before the operation his imagination and his brain weren’t working that well. His imagination started to work for the first time when he got this operation. Now that he was smart, he could quit his old job of working as a janitor at a bakery and start working for the hospital full time.
After reading the article, “The Myth of ‘I’m Bad at Math’” I began to think about my past learning experiences and realized that my opinions on this subject have changed drastically over the years. For the most part, I felt like this article made a lot of good points, especially considering my own experience with believing in incremental vs. fixed intelligence. Basically from the beginning of my schooling I was taught to think that some kids were just smarter than others, and that that couldn’t necessarily be changed. I think this had a lot to do with the fact that I was considered a “smart” kid: I caught onto most learning concepts easily, so people told me that I was “smarter” than other kids. If I had been a child who learned a different way, I think that I would have been taught to believe in the incremental model of intelligence very early on as to not discourage me from growing as a learner (which was exactly what teaching kids that
As a result of the operations, Charlie gains the experience of what it is like to be intelligent. Therefore, he sees the world as it is. “Only a short time ago, I learned that people laughed at me. Now I can see that unknowingly I joined them in laughing at myself. This hurts most of all” (76.) He can now truly understand how the outside world functions and how he is truly treated.
He desperately wants to become smart so he can communicate and live just like everyone else does. Charlie wants this operation so he can be smart and prove to everyone he isn't like he used to be. " Gimpy hollers at me all the time when I do something wrong, but he really likes me because he's my friend. Boy, if I get smart, won't he be surprised." (p 5)
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.
Intelligence has been commonly thought to decline as we get older, however this is a flawed belief. Countless individuals will argue that there are various cognitive processes that are associated with changes in the brain that do deteriorate with time, however there are also other brain areas that increase their activity in older age. I believe a person’s ability to perform certain tasks may become slower as they get older, but this doesn’t automatically mean that they are cognitively getting less intelligent. There are numerous ways in which intelligence can be defined, although it is commonly defined as general cognitive skills, this means that it is a mental ability involved in the capacity of learning, reasoning, perceiving relationships and analogies, understanding, facts, meanings, etc. (Dictionary definition). However Raymond Cattell (1963) argued that ‘intelligence does not generally consist of only cognitive performance’. Cattell and Horns theory developed in 1966 and emphasises that intelligence is composed of a number of different abilities that interrelate to form the broad term of intelligence. The main two factors are crystallised and Fluid intelligence.
To begin, when one has a good mind, one must also have ambitions and goals to go with it, if one wishes to be successful. Those who are intelligent are capable of doing great things, but without ambitions and goals, there is no reason to actually go out and accomplish anything. I myself know a man who never set goals for himself in life, even though he was brilliant. This man simply laid back and coasted on his laurels during his educational career because he was so smart. However, in high school, the work began to catch up to him, and soon enough he was failing most of his classes. Still, he was without ambition and had no intent of studying or trying to raise his grades. Today, he lives at home with his mother at the age of 25. This man perfectly illustrates the point that even though one might have a good mind, they must put it to use.
Others may say that charlie wouldn’t have been fired from his job but i argue that he still got his job back still. Another may say that he realized he was being bullied but i argue that his friends came back around and helped him out at the end for instance”the new men who came to work there after i went a way made a nasty crack he said hey charlie i hear you're a very smart fella a real quiz kid.Say something intelligent.I felt bad but joe carp came over and grabbed him by the shirt and said leave him alone you lousy cracker or I’ll break your neck…”. (keys,243) and that’s my
We can all sympathize with Charlie on the surface, we have all made mistakes that we have to live with. Charlie is attempting to move forward with his life and erase the mistakes of his past. The ghosts of his past torment him repeatedly throughout the story, his child's guardians despise him and his old friends do not understand him.
The Oxford Dictionary defines intelligence as “the ability acquire and apply knowledge and skills.” Many people are born naturally intelligent, able to grasp and understand concepts easily, with little work. In children, it is easy to separate those born with higher intellectual ability from the rest, because they easily excel in learning. This skill is often lost by those born with it, and through a great deal of work others attain it. In order for an individual to have true intelligence into her adult years, she must foster what gifts she is given, and strive to better her self academically. Even as early as elementary school, many who are born with natural talent begin to fall behind intellectually. These students are often not