Flowers for Algernon - Gaining Intelligence

Charlie's operation finds success, and this leads to further struggling within Charlie. He improves in his English skills, discovers things about his co-workers that he wasn't able to notice before, and he also recalls many memories from his past.

Even though these changes may seem happy, Charlie has a hard time dealing with them. I think I would it would be tough for me if I were in his situation, too. Since Charlie is more intelligent, he views things in a completely different way. The jokes and plays that seemed fun before are now insulting to him, since he somewhat figures out that his co-workers are teasing him. He remembers events in his past, and these are painful because they all reflect upon his dumbness. I think Charlie is generally embarrassed to see such bare truths about his own life. To suddenly see things that he used to be blind to would definitely be difficult to handle. I think my life is completely normal right now, being loved and cared by my friends and family. I am satisfied with my schoolwork and outer activities. However, if one day I saw everything differently and saw myself as a mentally retarded person being teased by others, my heart would break.

I think Charlie is going to become overloaded with painful information as he gains more and more intelligence. He is becoming too sensitive about the things people say and how they treat him. Even when they mean nothing bad, he takes it in emotionally and faces outbursts. I guess things ought to be difficult, since this whole experiment is no different from skipping 20 years of life. Charlie's intelligence grew from a 6 year old to an adult. He also forms new feelings of love towards Alice Kinnian, his instructor. However, she insists on keeping the personal feelings away and focus on the experiment. The smarter Charlie gets, the more troubled he is. I guess intelligence isn't always a good thing after all.

Flowers for Algernon - Introduction

It's been more than 2 weeks since I finished Life of Pi (even though I wasn't able to post anything), so I thought it would make more sense to start a new book and write about it.

I chose Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes. I never noticed before, but I guess it was always there on my bookshelf at home. My cousin told me it was a good book, so I decided to take a look at it, even though neither the title nor the picture of the mouse interested me.

The first part confused me a lot because of the poor spelling and grammar. I thought, 'This sounds like a 7-year old.' And I've never seen a book written like this either. Fortunately, the errors were well balanced so not only was it obvious that the protagonist of the novel was mentally retarded, but also I was able to understand the text. Charlie Gordon, the protagonist, is a 32-year old mentally retarded man who is set into an experiment of artificial intelligence. Right at the beginning, Charlie says how Dr. Strauss told him to start writing diaries so that they can see whether they can use him or not. Miss Kinnian, Charlie's instructor, also tells Charlie that they could make him smart.

Throughout the first several 'progress reports,' many characteristics of Charlie can be found. He is extremely dumb, cannot spell properly, has poor memorization skills, and also has a sensitive mind. On the other hand, he is known to work hard in his studies, has high motivation, and is willing to paricipate in the experiment to become smart. His dream is to become smart.

Despite his positive personality, Charlie does not have any family. Well, he does have a sister and mother, but they live away from him and Charlie doesn't remember much. The scientists are the ones who find his family and ask their permission. It's really sad how Charlie's mother and sister won't live with him. I don't know much about the reason, but it's obvious that they couldn't handle Charlie's mental state and left him with his uncle Herman, who also died a while ago.

I don't think the overall novel will be so sweet. I think it will mainly be about a mentally retarded man struggling with himself throughout the 'experiment.' Charlie may like being part of it, but to me, it seems like they're not even sure whether it will work or not. I can't see the difference between Charlie and Algernon, the lab rat. So far, I'm liking the novel, especially because of the significantly different structure. I'm also becoming fond of Charlie because of his kind personality. I hope he becomes smart and becomes happy.