Comparing 'Flowers For Algernon And Awakenings'

'"What's wrong with a man becoming intelligent and wanting to acquire knowledge and understanding of the world around him"' (pg.528). This quote comes from the Short story, Flowers for Algernon. The quote shows how all Charlie wanted was to be normal and smart, like everyone else on planet earth, and wanted to understand what was happening around him. Also to make the most out of the things around him and make himself and others proud of what he can do, but people are not understanding him. Flowers for Algernon the novel and the film Awakenings can be studied together because of their important similarities along with some notable differences regarding Lenard and Charlie, making it difficult for the reader and viewer to refrain from

Sayers, he was a new doctor and worked at a mental hospital in the Bronx. The hospital he worked at had all kinds of patients with weird and different diseases or disorders. Dr. Sayers had a goal and according to the article, Bringing Statues to Life, his goals was, "To help these people breakout of their semiconscious state"(Fehlhaber). This quote explains all he wanted was to achieve this and the goal to be successful. He looked at the many different kinds of disorders and diseases, before the one had caught his eye. The disease/disorder that had caught his eye were the patients, who had the extreme version of Parkinsonism. These patients have been catatonic for decades. The article Bringing Statues to life, it explains that, "He had heard about a new experiment drug, L-Dopa, which was being used to treat patients with Parkinson's disease" (Fehlhaber), so he thought he would try it on the others with the disease. Leonard was the Dr. Sayer first patient to try the drug and the main patient he worked with. He video taped Leonard throughout the experiment and explained the disease and what was happening. During his journey, Dr. Sayers discovered that the patients would move to certain kinds of music, catching a ball or an object, or touch familiar objects. A while after using L-Dopa, they had seen a jaw dropping sight, Leonard was out of his catatonic state and was awake! So then they decided to use the drug on the other

To start off, Leonard was a smart student and had friends, before he got the harsh disease that ruined his whole life. On the other hand, Charlie had the mental retardation since he was born, never really had friends, and never got to experience what it felt like to think the way everyone else did and comprehend the things surrounding him. Furthermore, in Flowers for Algernon Charlie had Algernon who had the same operation as him, that foreshadowed his fate. He explains, "Algernon died two days ago. His brain had decreased in weight, and there was a general soothing out of cerebral convolutions as well as a deepening and broadening of brain fissures. I guess that the same thing is or will soon be happening to me" (pg.533). In Awakenings, viewers were lead to believe the drug would be permanent and cure the disease. The doctors had no idea whether or not it would work, but after it had worked we were most likely convinced that L-Dopa had worked. Also the patients would stay that way forever, but sadly they just had to face the truth when the drug wore off. The third difference contrasting Flowers for Algernon and Awakenings is how after their doctors did whatever they did on them and was normals, they had different interest. Leonard wanted to explore and interact with society and nature and Charlie isolated himself the outside the world. Something to support this is that in the movie, Leonard tried to get out of the