Who Is Charlie Gordon A Dynamic Character In Flowers For Algernon

When passionate students are mentioned, people would mainly think of science enthusiasts, or hardworking and ambitious high school students. Some of the pupils most interested in learning, though, are the ones who suffer from dyslexia, or have any other mental illness preventing them from the luxury that is knowledge. Charlie Gordon, the protagonist in the short story Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes, is a mentally challenged 37 year old male who is passionate about reading and writing. He undergoes an operation that alters his way of thinking, behaviour, and personality, and increases his intelligence; the effects wear out soon after, and he loses his temporary intelligence. Due to these changes, Charlie Gordon is a dynamic character.

Before the operation, Charlie’s traits were childish in a way, and he never really thought of the horrible ways of some people around him, or suspected his friends and co-workers of making fun of him, and sadly, laughed along.

Charlie did not spell well, and his use of syntax was as bad, but he took night classes for slow adults to help him out, which is instructed by Miss Kinnian, whom he is really fond of. Miss Kinnian thought Charlie was her best student, and so she suggested him for an experiment conducted by Dr. Nemur and Dr. Strauss that triples his intelligence. For the experimentation, Charlie takes a series of tests: the Rorschach test, the Thematic Apperception Test, and a race in which he had to race a mouse named Algernon. The race made Charlie feel “worser than all the others because they' did it over 10 times with different amazeds and Algernon won every time” (pg. 2). Charlie thinks he lost because “Algernon is a white mouse. Maybe white mice are smarter than other mice.” (pg.

2).
Dr. Strauss convinced Dr. Nemur that Charlie was the right one because of his great motivation, and the decided to use him for the experiment. After the operation, Charlie started taking private lessons with Miss Kinnian in the laboratory, and he learned 12 years of school and university studies in just a few weeks. He beat Algernon in the maze, starts referring himself as Charles and stops seeing Miss Kinnian as an old, unreachable genius, but as a beautiful young lady. Charles begins to realize that his friends always made fun of him, “I never knew that Joe and Frank and the others liked to have me around all the time to make fun of me” (pg. 7). Other than the negative case with his friends, Charles’ imagination began to expand. He’s taken the Rorschach test again, and it took him a while but he then “imagined all sort of things” (pg. 8). Due to his reading skills increasing, Charlie could read an entire page at a glance, and his co-workers noticed the difference, which lost him his job. The operation changed Charles gallantly.
When Algernon died, Charles began researches that studied how long it would be before he himself regresses.

His hypothesis stated that “artificially increased intelligence deteriorates at a rate of time directly proportional to the quantity of increase” (pg. 13), meaning that if the subject learns an abundance of things, they would lose it all faster than they learned it. Moping around became a regular thing for Charles; he didn’t want to lose all his intelligence. The inevitable regression followed Charlie’s period of desperation to hold on to his intelligence, and he starts forgetting many things. To pay his overdue rent, Charlie gets his job back, and somehow his co-workers find out about the operation and its aftermath, and they try to show sympathy by helping him out and defending him, but Charlie doesn’t want them feeling bad for him. He desperately wants to maintain his ability to read, which is of great concern for him, but he is unfortunately unable to do so. One thing that Charlie still understood though is that he should not let people make fun of him, even if he had some episodes of amnesia. Not only will he remember to disallow people from ridiculing him, but even if he lost all of the abilities he has gained during the period of his temporary intelligence, and forgot many things, he will never forget Algernon. That is supported by Charlie’s request, “please if you get a chanse put flowers on Algernons grave in the bak yard” (pg.

16).