Essay: Flowers for Algernon – Analaysis

“Flowers for Algernon” written by Daniel Keyes in 1958 is a story of a man who starts out being mentally handicapped, but then goes through an operation that increases his intelligence and changes his life. At the end of the story, he is ending up being the mentally challenged man again. “Flowers for Algernon” is a science fiction story. The story is written in the first-person, from Charlie’s perspective, and told in the form of progress reports kept by Charlie Gordon. In that way, it gives the reader a unique experience.
Charlie I begyndelsen: In the first place Charlie is a thirty-two-year old man who is mentally diseased. He is like a little child, because of his low IQ of sixty-eight and his poor spelling. Charlie cannot think like smart people. He has struggles with his emotional life and he is isolated from humanity. Charlie’s lack of intelligence has made him a believing and friendly man, because his friends always are laughing with him, but he is not able to understand that they actually are laughing at him. Charlie is not able to understand that he is the subject for mockery. He always believes in the good. Charlie has poor grammar, spelling mistakes and he finds it very difficult to write that much in his progress reports. Charlie says “all my life I wantid to be smart and not dumb and my mom always tolld me to try and lern just like Miss Kinnian tells me but its very hard to be smart and even when I lern something in Miss Kinnians class at the school I ferget a lot”. By this, we clearly can see that Charlie is mentally handicapped because of his bad spelling and we also sees that he actually wants to be smart like other people. Charlie’s reason for wanting to be intelligent is purely social, he wants people to like him, and he knows that his retardation has cut him off from society, but his powerlessness does not upset him. Charlie thinks that intelligence is the quality that will gain him into a new world with lots of friends.
The operation: In the second place Charlie undergoes this experimental brain operation and that operation is an experiment to make Charlie smart, so he will become more intelligent and be able to understand. The operation will not only increase his intelligence but also change his life. Obviously, Charlie’s brain functions better after the operation. His reading skills are improved and he has abilities that he did not have before. Trough the operation his IQ rises to the level of a genius and his intelligence grows all the time. Charlie advances perspective on his past and present. He realizes a lot of things. For example, he realizes that people have taken advantage of him and have been cruel to him because they know that he does not understand that he is the subject. He also realizes that when people have been kind to him it usually has been out of awareness that he is inferior. Charlie’s writing becomes more lucid and he actually starts to do his own research on words he does not know. That also shows that he is developing through the operation because he wants to get his own knowledge. Charlie comes to feel that his mind contains two people, the new genius Charlie, who wants the emotional maturity and so there is the older mentally disabled Charlie. In the beginning, he thought that with the intelligence he would become popular, but when Charlie does become incredibly intelligent, he finds himself even lonelier than before because his intelligence distances him from people as much as his disability does. Charlie becomes understandably angry, hating the idea that he actually was the subject of mockery.
Dum igen: For another thing it is only in the last weeks of his high intelligence before he reverts to his previous mental retardation that he learns to forgive and give love to other people. Charlie actually feels even better about himself than he did before the operation, not because he had intelligence, but because he is able to understand other people. He has learned forgiveness. After the operation, Charlie is the same person in several ways. He still wants to learn which is importance. Charlie is still the man who wants friends and wants to be accepted by the people around him as someone they like. Trough the whole story Charlie is a kind man who simply wants to be accepted. In his final progress report, Charlie writes “P.S please tel prof Nemur not to be such a grouch when pepul laff at him and he would have more friends. Its easy to have frends if you let pepul laff at you. Im going to have lots of frends where I go.” In these sentences, it is clearly to see Charlie’s poor spelling, but also the development of Charlie.
To sum up: Interestingly, the experimental operation elevates Charlie’s intelligence to such an extent that his new genius distances him from people as much as his disability does. Charlie learns that intellectual superiority is not the most important goal of a human being.