Charlie Gordon In Daniel Keyes Flowers For Algernon

If you were mentally challenged, would you want to become intelligent and feel emotions? The book Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes is about Charlie Gordon, a man 32 years of age, with an intellectual disability. He gets an opportunity to improve his intelligence through an experimental operation. Through this opportunity he is then able to express emotions, grows mentally, fosters relationships and becomes intellectually smarter.

Charlie works at a bakery in New York City and some of his co-workers make fun of him because of his retardation but intellectually he doesn’t understand, he thinks they are good friends. Charlie then takes part in all kinds of tests, one involved a maze and a mouse named Algernon. Algernon had the surgery that Charlie is going to have.

Charlie has the surgery, and slowly his reading, spelling and memories improve with help from his teacher, Alice. Over time

Charlie realizes that he is attracted to Alice but she says she wants to keep it professional. The old Charlie would not have been able to feel these emotions, but along with feeling love he also feels sadness and rejection. This is a new feeling for Charlie. When he started to get closer to Alice, he has flashback memories of his mother beating him, this made it hard for him to be intimate.

The scientist’s working with Charlie, Dr. Strauss and Professor Nemur, treat Charlie like any other lab animal and Charlie doesn’t like it. He has become so smart that he is even smarter than them. After they all go to a scientific convention, Charlie runs away to New York City with Algernon. They live in an apartment and stay away from the scientists. Charlie can see that Algernon is acting different and remembers that his intelligence might not be permanent. Emotionally this bothers him, he feels like what happens to Algernon will eventually happen to him. Algernon eventually dies. Charlie continues with his own research.

With his new intellect and memories, Charlie decides to visit his mother and sister and the visit is both happy and sad, remembering both the good and the bad.

Rose, Charlie’s mother isn’t quite right and has a flashback and attacks Charlie with a knife. He leaves crying but feels he now has some closure to this part of his life.

After eventually falling back into retardation, he forgets about Alice and the feelings of love, his mind regresses and his intellect and memories aren’t there anymore. He goes back to work at the bakery. They accept him back as the old Charlie. People that came to know the new, smarter Charlie are sad for what he has lost, and probably what they have lost too. But Charlie doesn’t remember and doesn’t really have any feeling about it and decides to live in a group home for disabled adults.

So again I will ask, if you were mentally challenged, would you want to become smart, feel emotions and have relationships only to have it all taken away again? I think it is Tennyson who said “Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at

all”.