Does Greater Intelligence lead to Greater Happiness?
Do you think that if you were smarter, you would be happier? In Daniel Keyes’ novel Flowers for Algernon, the main character Charlie Gordon, who is a mentally retarded 32-year-old who undergoes a surgery that improves his intelligence threefold. All his life all he wanted was to be smart and now that he is smart, he finds life isn’t much better when you are smart. I believe that in this particular case, greater intelligence did not lead to greater happiness, because once he becomes smart, he gets arrogant and his friends don’t like him anymore. Charlie’s also not emotionally intelligent enough to balance out his factual intelligence.and when he leaves the convention, all he finds are the
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problems of a normal person, and he does not yet have enough experience with stress and it makes him miserable. Prior to the surgery, Charlie is a nice, open person, always ready to learn.
But when he becomes way smarter, he slowly slides into being an overconfident and bossy person. “You’ve developed from a likable, retarded young man into an arrogant, antisocial, self-centered bastard”. (p 189) This quote proves that he used to be likable and now even his personality has turned around. All of who he thought were his friends now are definitely not his friends anymore.
When he becomes smart, he only becomes knowledgeably smart and since he loves Miss Kinnian and Fay, it makes him unstable that he doesn’t have much emotional intelligence. “What you’re saying is that young boys are always falling in love with their teachers, and emotionally i’m still a boy” this quote proves that Charlie is emotionally unbalanced. He doesn’t understand much and he ends up unhappy.
When Charlie leaves the convention, he starts a life of a normal person, but since he has only ever learned how to research and learn, he only comes up with stress and all the problems of people who weren’t turned into geniuses. “I don’t really know what I’m doing on a jet heading back to New York”. This quote is proof that Charlie didn’t yet know how to cope with the pain and stress of life because he didn’t have enough worldly experience to do much other than learn. When he ends up like this, he gets
unhappy All of the reasons stated here are proof that Charlie did not get happier by getting more intelligence. He was a lot meaner, he never had much emotional intelligence, and he didn’t have a lot of worldly experience
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.
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.
Charlie lived in a paradise-like world, he though he had many "friends". The only thing he felt he was missing was brains. When he was offered the chance to become 'smart' he jumped at the chance to be like everyone else. Unprepared for the changes intelligence would bring, Charlie lost his innocence. When he realizes his 'friends' don't actually like him they just liked to make fun of him.
The scientists who performed the experiment now need a human subject to test, and Charlie has been recommended to them by his night-school teacher, Miss Kinnian. Charlie's a good candidate for the procedure, because even though he currently has an I.Q. of only 68, he is willing, highly motivated and eager to learn. He's convinced that if he could only learn to read and write, the secret of being smart would be revealed to him.
Before Charlie became smart, even the simplest things in life were good enough for him. As a genius, none of those things mattered to him. His mind was more complex, he needed more and he wanted more. As a result, he felt alone and buried himself in his work.
Before the operation, he exhibited some clear strengths such as determination, a positive attitude, friendly with people and some weaknesses such as education and inability to understand the adult world. After the operation, he begun to change in numerous ways. Charlie started out as being not really intelligent. Being around with “smart” people made him want to change and became “intelligent” just like his “friends.” I think its all crazy. If you can get smart when your sleeping why do people go to school. That thing I don't think will work. I use to watch the late show and the late late show on TV all the time and it never made me smart (Keyes 118). This part of the book led Charlie’s flashbacks takes place of how he was raised or nurtured through his childhood, Of how he wanted to try to become smart. However Dr. Strauss believes that his sleep would help Charlie be able to learn. However in his nature, his disability cannot help him at all, doesn’t matter how much he tries to watch TV and tries to go to sleep, I wouldn’t allow him to learn anything at all. The nurture of this is having the doctor recommend Charlie to do this. His disability also not just affects him but his family as well. His disability kind of makes his sister miserable as well, jealous over how the parents focus on Charlie due to his disability, despite the successes the sister achieves in school. Thus Charlie’s nature towards others has a negative effect which is towards his sister. Charlie was raised by his parents but through a condition that would then follow him probably for the rest of his life as well as being mainly raised through this experiment, which possibly wouldn’t help him at all in the near
He is then judged even harsher which is why you shouldn’t try to be someone that you’re not. You should stay true to yourself. In the story, it says “Their going to use me! I am so exited I can hardly write” (Keyes page 351). This implies that Charlie is anxious to undergo the surgery that will make him smart. Another part says “If you volenteer for this experament you mite get smart”. (Keyes page 351) This shows that the operation will make him more intelligent so he can fit in with everyone else. This proves that Charlie is trying to be someone he is not in order to fit
Charlie’s intelligence started to fall. Slowly he lost it all, from foreign languages to math equations to reading and writing.
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.
...ss cannot be deprived from increased intelligence, particularly without emotional maturity. Throughout the beginning of the Novel all Charlie Gordon wants in life is to become smarter so which will in turn make him happier and help him gain more friends. Not even fame or worldwide recognition could overcome his will to become happier from intelligence. However as the book progressed and Charlie did receive his wish to become smarter he realized, without emotional maturity he was even worse off than before which then may have caused his relapse and loss of memory bringing Charlie back to his previous condition. Expecting to be happy from the respect from other people by being intelligent is neither reasonable nor logical. Happiness needs to be derived from within, and cannot be won from other people, and those who believe it can are not yet emotionally stable.
He matures as he grows in his intellectual capacity, and he gets an opportunity to learn valuable life lessons and realizes that he is better off being mentally retarded rather than being a genius. Firstly, Charlie's operation turns him into an extremely intelligent person. Charlie becomes much smarter as the novel unfolds. A little after his operation, Charlie's IQ slowly starts to increase. He finally beat Algernon after losing to him in a race repeatedly.
He is now getting mad and starting to see why happiness and being smart aren't related when Dr. Strauss says, “’The more intelligent you become the more problems you’ll have, Charlie. Your intellectual growth is going to outstrip your emotional growth. And I think you’ll find that as you progress, there will be many things you’ll want to talk to me about. I just want you to remember that this is the place for you to come when you need help” Keyes (47). They know that Charlie is going to have starting problems and that makes Charlie kind of mad because it makes him see that happiness is a lot harder to get when you are smart. Now he has to start working for things because the smarter he gets the more problems he's faced with. Anyone would be mad or upset knowing that things are about to get harder and about to
“...and she said Charlie you're going to have a second chance. If you volunteer for this you might get smart” (Keyes 286). This is a quote said by Charlie recalling Miss Kinnian’s words from the book, Flowers for Algernon. Miss Kinnian’s words influenced Charlie to go through with the surgery. After his surgery, the consequences were quite sad and disappointing. Charlie Gordon was laughed at and made fun of for his little amount of intelligence. Everyday his intelligence level increased exponentially. Although his mind was only agile for just for a small period of time and was able to have friends again, he learned skills and facts about different fields of study, like psychology and mathematics, with the experience and feeling of intelligence
He was happy, optimistic, and very nice to others. He was thrilled to have the operation to make him smarter, so, in a progress report, he wrote, “Their (they’re) going to use me! I’m so excited I can hardly write.” This demonstrates how ecstatic Charlie was for his surgery, and how he was like this in many other aspects of his life. The surgery, however, had resulted in many changes in his life, including his emotional state. He often felt upset and became easily agitated. After the surgery, he says, “I can feel the darkness closing in. It’s hard to throw off thoughts of suicide.” (Keyes 302) The way he feels about his life and himself had changed drastically
He was involved in a fight defending his friend and always tries to do the right things, but sometimes they do not always have the best outcome for Charlie. He does not remember the fight because he completely blacks out, but it is after this fight it is when he begins to, as he puts it, “starting to get bad again.” Finally, when all of his friends leave for college, he has a flashback of all the bad things that he has not talked about with anyone else. And this long flashback, makes him attempt suicide. If a Charlie was a real psychiatric patient, he would diagnose with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. Throughout the movie, Charlie experiences flashbacks of what he once thought was a dream of his Aunt Helen and him alone, the night his aunt died, and other scenes that show how much anger and sadness he is building