Essay Sample on Charlie Gordon in Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keye

📌Category: Books, Flowers For Algernon
📌Words: 671
📌Pages: 3
📌Published: 15 February 2022

“A child may not know how to feed itself, or what to eat, yet it knows of hunger” (299) Knowledge can be powerful but that isn’t always a good thing. Throughout this story, Charlie Gordon learns this the hard way.  The short story, “Flowers for Algernon”, by Daniel Keyes is about a 37 year old male who is mentally disabled, signs up for a brain operation in hopes to bring up his intelligents, his current IQ is 68, but the operation claims to triple it. The story takes place after the operation, and shows how the operation changes his brain. With him is a mouse who also got the operation, Algernon, they slowly go from test subjects to friends, but unknowingly the operation has an after effect. I believe that the operation was not worth it, although he might have gotten smarter, the after effects unfortunately overshadow the good. The operation brought Charlie so much suffering, I believe the surgery wasn’t worth it. My two reasons are that everything around him turned out bad, and when losing he’s intelligents he had to go through pain and anger.

 For my first reason, Everything around him turned out bad. I believe that his life was much happier when he didn’t get the surgery. One piece of evidence is that on page 306, Charlie said “Please tell Dr Nemur not to be such a grouch when pepul laff at him and he woud have more frends. Its easy to make frends if you let pepul laff at you. Im going to have lots of frends where I go.” Even though other people might think it’s not going that people are making fun of you, Charlie was much happier when people were laughing at him than when he learned the truth. His co-workers that he once thought of as friends turned out to be people that bullies him. People would think that he’s naive but at least he was happy, he was an innocent, naive person, but after he got the operation he lost the people around him that once made him happy including the truly kind people like Miss Kinnian and Mrs. Flynn, here is a part showing Charlie slowly drifting apart from Mrs. Flynn, “I told Mrs. Flynn my landlady to call and tell Mr. Donnegan I was sick. Mrs. Flynn looks at me very funny lately like she’s scared of me.” (293) Another part is when Charlie said that Mrs. Flynn is avoiding him lately, because of the operation people that once cared about him started to avoid him. This can be used for two people Mrs. Flynn and Fanny. The people he trusted betrayed him, he thought that out of everyone they would be the people who would stay by his side but they left him alone. This is why I believe that Charlie would have been better without the operation because everyone around him turned out bad/not what he was expecting. 

For my second reason, when losing his intelligence he had to go through lots of pain and anger. One piece of evidence is that on page 302, Charlie said “I remember how great I thought John Milton was, but when I picked up Paradise Lost I couldn’t understand it at all. I got so angry I threw the book across the room. I’ve got to try to hold on to some of it. Some of the things I’ve learned. Oh, God, please don’t take that away.” This quote is very important because it shows that Charlie is desperate to keep his memory and everything he learned. When he realized that he could never read his favorite book again, he got so frustrated at himself. The anger he felt was towards himself and the world. He was unfortunately overwhelmed with knowing that he could never have the feeling of happiness when he finishes a new book.  He feels as though all the knowledge he recently learned is slipping away. One important part of the story which makes it not worth it is that at the end, Charlie didn’t learn anything from the experience. For example, At the end of the story, Charlie says “I remember I did something but I dont remember what. So I gess its like I did it for all the dumb pepul like me.”

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