Flowers For Algernon Analysis

What if an incredible new surgery was created, one that could make someone an instant genius. It sounds great, except there is a catch. This surgery has never been used before and there may be some… side effects. This is the situation a mentally disabled man, Charlie Gordon was thrust into in the short story “Flowers for Algernon” by Daniel Keyes. Charlie is a happy man. Daily he is a janitor in a factory. Nightly, he attends Miss Kinnians class for adults. His life is fine but he wants one thing, to be intelligent. Meanwhile, two scientists, Dr. Nemur and Dr. Strauss have perfected an experiment to raise a being’s intelligence. After succeeding in an experiment with a mouse named Algernon they want to try it on a human host. They send word
There is a saying, “Ignorance is bliss”. Sometimes people are happier not knowing things. At the factory Charlie worked at, pulling a Charlie Gordon meant messing up bad. But Charlie didn’t know that, and that made in even funnier for the other employees of the factory. But not knowing also meant that he was laughing along with them. Because he didn’t realize, he was happier, and that is why ignorance is bliss for Charlie. That is until he got the surgery. Charlie had been to many parties, but the one on April 20th was different. This was the first party he had been to after his intelligence has been artificially increased by the surgery. He realized that something is off. “I didn’t know what to do or where to turn. Everyone was looking at me and laughing and I felt naked. I wanted to hide. I ran outside and threw up. Then I walked home. It’s a funny thing I never knew that Joe and Frank and others liked to have me around all the time to make fun of me. Now I know what it means to ‘pull a Charlie Gordon.’ I’m ashamed.”(Keyes 11) He found out that others were making fun of him. Since he now knew the truth about his friends, he became ashamed. He says “I
He’s reaching his life goal of being smarter. But something happens. Around late may, Charlie visited the lab to visit Algernon, the original experiment for the surgery, a white mouse. They have had a close bond since the beginning of the test, both being experimented on. Charlie senses something has changed this time. “It happened today. Algernon bit me. I visited the lab as I do occasionally, and when I took him out of his cage, he snapped at my hand. I put him back and watched him for a while. He was unusually disturbed and vicious.” (Keyes 20). Algernon is a very intelligent mouse. He was even smarter than Charlie at the beginning of the experiment. Though this behavior may be normal for the average mouse, he would never do something like this. When Charlie says “I put him back and watched him for a while”, he is connecting the dots. If something happened to Algernon, could something happen to him too? He begins to do research on his own, finding something he calls the Algernon-Gordon Effect, after himself and Algernon. The Effect is “Artificially increased intelligence deteriorates at a rate of time directly proportional quantity of the increase.”(Keyes 23). Charlie is stating that his intelligence will go away as quickly as it came. This makes him severely