Keyes’s Experiment: Ignorance to Intellect, and Back Again What would happen if scientists found a way to exponentially increase human intelligence through a simple medical procedure? In his most famous novel, Flowers for Algernon, American author Daniel Keyes not only poses this provoking question, but shares his own answer through the story of Charlie Gordon, a mentally disadvantaged man whose IQ skyrockets within a matter of months after an experimental operation. Through Charlie’s eyes, readers are able to experience the ascent from mental incapability to profound intelligence, as well as the range of emotions that accompany it. However, Keyes was a far cry from mentally incompetent, and although he could not relate to Charlie’s IQ of …show more content…
In his childhood years, Rose insisted that her son was normal, taking him to various doctors for miracle treatments contrary to her husband’s logical reasoning that they would have to accept him. Throughout the entirety of his life, Charlie seeked Rose’s acceptance. He tried hard to act like the other children on his block, doing his best to seem as smart as them. Even after his sister, Norma, was born and Rose gave up hope for having a normal son, Charlie continued to strive towards her approval and affection. His strong determination to learn and undergo the operation was a large product of his mother’s verbal and physical abuse towards him. In Progress Report 16, Charlie pays a long overdue visit to his senile mother. Initially, Rose rushes inside the house and refuses to let her son inside. In a desperate response, Charlie shouts to her through the door, “Ma… I just want to talk to you. You’ve got to understand, I’m not the same as I was. I’ve changed. I’m normal now. Don’t you understand? I’m not retarded any more. I’m not a moron. I’m just like anyone else. I’m normal--just like you and Matt and Norma” (Keyes 183). His distraught pleas to Rose show that even after being thrown out of the house, abused, and disowned by her, he still deeply craves her acceptance and motherly love. To a lesser extent, Charlie’s inability to please Rose reflects Keyes’s own struggle to reach his …show more content…
Brett Cox’s criticism for Novels for Students, he states that Flowers for Algernon is “a powerful story of alienation, of an individual who is at odds with his society and who struggles to have satisfactory relationships with others” (56). This statement is certainly true for Charlie’s character both prior to and following his surgery. Before his IQ tripled, Charlie was oppressed by his lack of intelligence and the people around him, including his parents and coworkers. He was seen by others simply as a juvenile fool who could easily be made fun of to his face without him realizing. Much like other mentally disabled people during the era of the civil rights movement, he was seen as an anomaly in society. Charlie believed that once he became a genius, he would suddenly fit in with everybody else around him and that people would treat him like an equal human being. On the contrary, becoming smart only alienated him more. In Progress Report 13, Charlie and Professor Nemur visited a convention to unveil their experiment in Chicago. Nemur spoke, “We… have the satisfaction of knowing we have taken one of nature’s mistakes and… created a superior human being… It might be said that Charlie Gordon did not really exist before this experiment” (Keyes 312). Thus, readers learn that Nemur had never truly thought of him as a human, even after he became smart. Likewise, in Progress Report 14, Charlie tells Alice Kinnian, “Somehow I’ve become separated emotionally from everyone and