Charlie Gordan In Flowers For Algernon

In the story “Flowers for Algernon” by Daniel Keyes, there is a character named Charlie Gordan, who is mentally disabled and has been for his entire life of 37 years. He goes to a special school for people who need assisted learning as an adult and is chosen for an experiment that had never been tested on humans. The experiment is supposed to boost someone's intelligence 3 times more than before. They choose Charlie because due to his low IQ of 68, he is more likely to show results of the experiment working if his IQ does, indeed, grow. Charlie's IQ does go up and most likely peaks around 200 and he starts to investigate his own situation and continues to read advanced books and write papers even exceeding the doctor’s knowledge. As the story nears an end, the animals who were also experimented on
Some people argue that this means it was not a successful operation and some even think it was a disaster due to the gruesome conclusion of him reverting back to his old self. In his journal entry on June 10 he writes “Deterioration progressing. I have become absentminded. Agernon died two days ago. Dissections show my prediction was right. His brain had decreased in weight and there was a general smoothing out of the cerebral convolutions as well as deepening and broadening of brain fissures. I guess the same thing is or will soon be happening to me.” He is saying that Alegernon, the once brilliant mouse, died due to his brain basically shrinking and becoming contorted. Charlie believes that will happen to himself soon. Many of my classmates have came to the conclusion that because this happened to Algernon, and soon to Charlie, the operation was not successful. Even though many people side with this opinion, they are wrong. Charlie reached the 200 IQ and that was the goal of the operation in the first place proving the operation was