Overcoming Obstacles In Daniel Keyes Flowers For Algernon

”And she said, Charlie, you’re going to have a second chance. If you volunteer for this experiment you might get smart. They don’t know if it will be permanent but there’s a chance.” This story is about Charlie, who has an IQ of 68 and is extremely unintelligent, becoming smart through an operation, along with a mouse named Algernon. It shows how he changes and what eventually happens in the end. This story “Flowers for Algernon”, by Daniel Keyes, shows that great obstacles can be overcome, but consequences may occur in the end.

Charlie is very uneasy before the experiment, as he doesn’t know if he is going to get chosen or not. For instance, when Charlie is being tested for the experiment he says “I was very scared even though I had my rabbits foot in my pocket because when I was a kid I always failed tests in school…” Because he was scared but he went through with the tests, it is showing him overcoming obstacles in his path. Charlie is also very nervous because when he was doing the ink tests, he couldn't see the different pictures. According to the author, Charlie mentioned “I didn't see nothing

I hate that mouse. He always beats me.” This is coming back to the point that consequences can start to occur after you beat the odds. After a while though, he started to realize that he was becoming smarter, little by little. For instance, his teacher Miss Kinnan said “You are learning very quickly. You're a fine person and you'll show them all.” This was a point where Charlie was overcoming an obstacle in his life, which left him very happy. However, as time went along, he was doing great, but something was a little off. Based on the text, Charlie mentioned “It was hard to hide that some of the other animals used in the experiment are showing strange behaviors. One of the consequences of overcoming the obstacle of his dumbness was starting to