Flowers for Algernon

Is knowledge the key to happiness? Does the fact that you know almost everything, complete your life? Or does it make you distant to your friends and family? These are some of the main questions Daniel Keys raise in his prizewinning fictional novel “Flowers for Algernon” from 1966. The Novel is about the mentally challenged Charlie Gordon, who will do anything to learn, and become ‘a smart person’. Charlie accepts the terms of an experiment, which will triple his IQ, even though he is not told of the consequences of the experiment.
The novel “Flowers for Algernon” is written in the diary form, and the story features a first person narrator called Charlie Gordon. The novel is combined of several progress reports that show the current intelligence of Charlie. As we follow his everyday life, we get detailed information about his increase in artificial intelligence. Throughout the story the reader almost gets a feeling that there are multiple narrators telling the story. Nevertheless the sudden huge growth in grammatical skills is not simply because of another narrator expressing the story, it it’s merely due to the fact that the experiment triples Charlie’s IQ. This experiment takes Charlie’s writing skills to a point, where it’s almost flawless. Having this in mind, the story in a way switches narrator three times. The story starts of with Charlie before his operation, where he’s not exactly mentally gifted. Actually he would be referred to as a mentally retarded person. Charlie’s co-workers keep mocking and laughing at him, even though at this state he doesn’t understand that he is the one they’re laughing at. “Sometimes somebody will say hey look at Joe or Frank or George he really pulled a Charlie Gordon. I don’t know why they say that but they always laff.” The second part of the story is told when Charlie’s intelligence rapidly increases to a point, where nobody has the same amount of knowledge as him anymore. “I was shocked to learn that the only ancient languages he could read were Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and that he knows almost nothing of mathematics beyond elementary levels of the calculus of variations.” In this part of the novel, Charlie’s co-workers get deeply shocked, since they do not know why Charlie suddenly turned so smart that quickly. The ending of the story expresses the quick deterioration of Charlie’s intelligence. Right before Charlie returns to his normal level of IQ, he concludes in his report “The Algernon Gordon Effect” that: The quicker and the more knowledge you acquire, the quicker you’ll lose it again. This means that Charlie will lose his superior knowledge extremely fast, considering that the story only operates on a three weeks’ timeline. In the beginning of the story Charlie attends a class for mentally challenged people, where he is being taught by a woman named Miss Kinnian, whom he later falls in love with. Miss Kinnian always tries to help Charlie, and she is the one who recommends Charlie as a candidate for the experiment. When Charlie’s brain develops and he gets an IQ over 200, his relationship to Miss Kinnian becomes rockier, as she doesn’t like the way that “the new Charlie Gordon” thinks and shows his arrogance. Professor Nemur and Doctor Strauss are the two scientists in control of Charlie’s operation. In the first part of the novel, Charlie has a very good association to these to researchers. However as Charlie’s intelligence grows inhumane, he slowly realizes that they are nothing more than ordinary people with a slightly higher knowledge, who tries to make a living.
“It was evil when Eve listened to the snake and ate from the tree of knowledge. It was evil when she saw she was naked.” You can put this phrase from ‘the fall of man’ in the bible into perspective to Charlie’s life. There are many similarities in both cases. They were both not mentally gifted, and were both persuaded to a certain degree to gain knowledge. Neither of them knew of the consequences that would follow this act. Eve got expelled from the Garden of Eden, and Charlie got kicked out of his job. There’s a quotation showing some similarities between Charlie Gordon, and when Adam and Eve acquire knowledge, and suddenly they feel naked. “I didn’t know what to do or where to turn. Everyone was looking at me and laughing and I felt naked.” He realizes that in a way he would be better off without all of this knowledge, as it exposes him as ‘naked’, just like Adam and Eve.
The novel takes up the never ending subject “Don’t tamper with God’s creations.” You cannot tweak human beings, into being something that God didn’t create. The two scientists take on the role of God in this story, which is a far too complicated role for any human being. Charlie Gordon believes that being intelligent will bring him more friends than ever, however the reality of that is the exactly opposite. Everyone loves the old stupid Charlie, who is always happy, smiling and loving every little thing in his life. When Charlie’s intelligence deteriorates in the ending, he wins his old friends back, who have got his back, whenever someone mocks him, for not being clever. Daniel Keys’s tries through this novel to show the world that, being extraordinary clever is not necessarily related to Utopia. Keys also tries to describe that every living being has a life that is worth living, no matter how your childhood goes, or which blood runs through your veins.

Charlie Gordon is retarded, but he dreams about becoming a genius. One day he is offered an experimental brain surgery, which might fulfil his desire. He accepts the offer. Charlie’s intelligence increases massively. At last he becomes a genius; however this turns out not only to be a blessing. Additionally Charlie discovers that the doctor forgot to tell him something. Daniel Keyes didn’t write a whole lot of science fiction; however he is very well respected for especially one of his classics, Flowers for Algernon. It is the story of Charlie and Algernon, the duo, who are both guinea pigs in a scientific experiment, which will show whether it is possible to increase artificial intelligence. At first, the scientists transform Algernon into a brilliant mouse, next up; Charlie volunteers to follow quadruped footsteps. The short story was published in 1959 and won the Hugo award; the novel was published in 1966 and won the Nebula award. Cliff Robertson won an Oscar for his role in the film, Charly, from 1968.