Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes Book Analysis

The science fiction novelette “Flowers for Algernon” by Daniel Keyes is about a 37-year-old man named Charlie Gordan who is mentally challenged and is used for a science experiment as a lab rat. Charlie is chosen by a team of scientists to take part in a provisional surgery made to boost his intelligence by three times. Charlie’s teacher (Alice Kinnian) has recommended Charlie for this experiment, because of his eagerness to learn and become smarter. Charlie has a job at a bakery, and the other employees often make fun of him, but Charlie is unable to comprehend the fact that he is being made fun of, because he thinks that they are his friends. Charlie meets a mouse named Algernon who has done the experiment to get his IQ boosted by three times. Charlie then does the experiment and competes with Algernon to solve a maze before him. Charlie gets frustrated because he doesn't see immediate results from the experiment he took place in, but soon starts to see progress in his handwriting and grammatical skills. He starts to feel isolated because of how smart he becomes, because he can’t properly communicate with less intelligent people. Charlie soon realizes that Algernon’s intelligence starts to decrease, and becomes frightened because he thinks the same will happen to him. He tries to save himself from losing his intelligence, but ultimately fails in doing so. Charlie goes back to his self-hated unintelligent self in the end. 

The theme of this text is “Isolation”. Charlie was alone when he wasn’t smart, and even more alone when he became smart. The idea of isolation is very consistent in this text by Daniel Keys. “The worst cruelty that can be inflicted on a human being is isolation”- Sukarno, I think of Charlie when it comes to this quote. When Charlie was mentally challenged, he was alone, but couldn’t assimilate the fact that he was. When he became more intelligent, he started to seclude himself because of his own arrogance and the feeling of inferiority of others. Flowers For Algernon was a beautiful text in terms of literature, but pretty boring in my personal opinion or just not my preference in literature. 

For the most part, we see Charlie's Intelligence increase and then decrease in the end. In the beginning he was a mentally challenged innocent man, whose goal was to increase his wit. In the start of his “Progress Reports” his grammatical skills were less than a 6th grader’s. He would even spell the title “Progris Riport” wrong, this continued until Miss Kinnian corrected him. Throughout his Journal he would make countless spelling mistakes, but he would always learn the correct spelling after someone corrected him. He was innocent because of the fact that he believed in things like “good-luck charms”. After getting his IQ boosted, his grammatical skills improved exponentially. He stopped believing in good-luck. He started reading a lot more books to increase his knowledge. Almost everyone starts to develop some type of fear towards him, because of how smart he becomes, he begins to get isolated. He finally starts to realize that he was always alone even before he got more intelligent. 

Flowers For Algernon is about “isolation” and “loneliness”, in one of his first progress reports Charlie says that he wants to be smart “so I can have lots of friends who like me”. The only reason for Charlie to say this is because he felt alone, through loneliness you start to see illusions such as; Charlie thinking that his co-workers are his friends. There are common literary devices in this novelette such as symbolism. We see symbolism throughout Charlie trying to solve the maze. His trials and errors trying to solve the maze indicates his trials and errors of trying to become smarter.  There is also an example of a juxtaposition, “The Algernon-Gordon Effect” which is what they named the consequence of Charlie’s intelligence boost. The Algernon Gordan effect explains how there is a rapid increase in intelligence, but your intelligence decreases at the same rate of the increase. “The Algernon-Gordon Effect” is a juxtaposition because the two names are placed together with a contrasting effect. 

In addition, I can connect to Charlie personally in the context of the theme: isolation/alienation. When I was in kindergarten, I was in a pure French school. I couldn’t speak or understand French at all, so I felt alienated in that school. The alienation then turned to isolation. This connects to how Charlie felt alienated because of how smart he got, so he was isolated from others. For example, how after getting smarter Charlie went to his job and nobody talked to him. 

In conclusion, do I think Charlie would have been better off had he never had the operation? Yes, I do think he would have been better off. His goal was to get smarter, so that he could make a lot of friends, but he was always getting “smarter” without doing the experiment. He was learning everyday and increasing his knowledge slowly. Since he was mentally challenged he couldn’t comprehend the fact that his “friends” weren’t truly his friends, but at least in his mind he’d still have friends. The saying “ignorance is bliss” would actually be true in this context, because if he thinks he has friends he’d be happier. Happier than he was in his isolation.