Character Analysis Of Charlie In Daniel Keyes Flower For Algernon

In Flower for Algernon, Daniel Keyes presents the idea that everyone should treat people the way they want to be treated. In the book Charlie was invited to a party, some people there decided to joke with Charlie and gave him a plastic apple. Charlie ended up taking a bite into the fake apple and when he did everyone was laughing at him, Frank then said “I told ya he’d eat it. C’n you imagine anyone dumb enough to eat wax fruit?” (Keyes 41). This evidence shows that the other adults at the party pranked Charlie into eating something that wasn’t edible because his mind couldn’t process what was happening to him and that fake apple. This also includes them laughing at Charlie and Charlie getting called a name but Charlie doesn’t know what
they are doing is wrong. Professor Nemur said, “But I wasn’t referring to now. I meant before the operation” (Keyes 89). Professor Nemur saying what he said made it seem as if Charlie wasn’t human until Nemur performed surgery on him. Also, this showed that Nemur thought of the old Charlie as unimportant because he wasn’t smart like the other human beings. “They were laughing at him because he was retarded” (Keyes 198). This explains itself, laughing at someone else, making them feel lower just because the kid was retarded and the people around the kid had normal processing mind’s made them feel the right to laugh at him. This is offensive towards special people, they too are also humans but since they can’t process there mind as well as other people they get laughed at. “I find no pleasure in discussing ideas any more on such an elementary level,” said Charlie (Keyes 97). Now that Charlie has developed and became smarter he now treats other people lower. Now that he is more developed and smarter he remembers all the bad things everyone did to him, which made him very paranoid and angry that they laugh at him. Now everyone around Charlie feels lower. This goes to show that treating someone badly could later in the future effect back at anyone. In conclusion, this just shows that you should treat people the way you would want to be treated.