Flowers For Algernon: Happiness Or Intelligence?

Happiness or Intelligence? When it comes picking intelligence and happiness, a person might not be able to have both in life. In the short story “Flowers For Algernon” written by Daniel Keyes, Charlie Gordon has a disability which entails of him not being like everybody else. Reading and writing do not come easy to him, and is not aware of a lot of things. All of Charlie’s life, he wanted to be smart and fit in. He got the chance to be smart with an experiment that was already tested on a mouse, Algernon. Charlie was a genius for around three months. In those months, he lost his friends and experienced what life really was. One day, Algernon bit Charlie for the first time, and Charlie was also told not to come to the lab anymore. He then realized that his

After Charlie figured out that his intelligence was going to deteriorate from Algernon, he did not want his new knowledge to leave his mind, so he said that “Im gonna keep trying to get smart so I can have that feeling agen [sic],” (Keyes 28). Charlie was so determined to keep his knowledge because he had such a passion of reading and writing, and enjoyed remembering different things in books. Although, even though he mentioned that he would try really hard to gain back his intelligence, it is not really possible because that was how he was born. When he mentions “that feeling”, it shows that it was a certain feeling that he never felt, but he will end up living his new life knowing what it was like to be a genius. This could lead to depression and a really dark place for him since it was such good feeling for him to be smart, he cannot imagine life without being smart. So for the rest of life, he could have pity for not being smart. This makes it seem that he would be better off without the surgery because it could cause many different problems throughout his life with knowing the fact that he was