Flowers for Algernon

553 Words2 Pages

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to pick your baby? What it would be like to choose his or her eye color, hair color, skin tone, bone structure; basically everything about your child. You can't yet, but advances in genetic engineering are allowing us to come close. This raises the question of whether or not we should be allowed to pick these things for our descendants, and how far should we go with changing nature. In the short story, "Flowers for Algernon" themes of human engineering, ethics and whether it is morally correct to play at being God or not, run rampant. In this story, Charlie Gordon is the subject of a human engineering experiment. I believe that this experiment was good for Charlie's mental health for the most part; it was not good for his emotional or physical health. In this essay, I will show you how it helped Charlie experience new things, and how it expanded his understanding, at the cost of his emotional health.

Before I really start this essay, I will provide some background on the story. Charlie Gordon, in the story, was a 37 year-...

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