Flowers For Algernon Comparison

After having read several short science fiction stories, two certain stories really stood out to me, those two short stories were," Flowers for Algernon”, written by Daniel Keyes and, “The Second Variety”, written by Phillip K. Dick. I found that both of those texts focused on the central theme of man playing God, and both of them had their own approach of showing what happens when man plays God. Even though the outcomes of both stories are very different they both reach the same central idea of what happens when man plays God in similar ways. Both stories had a rising action followed by an epiphany, where the main character realizes a “mistake” has been made, and then they both leave the reader with the feeling that when man plays God, nothing
In “The Second Variety” this is very clearly portrayed early on in the story when the main character initially encounters the David. Hendricks thought that the David was very abnormal but just let it slip, it wasn’t until later on when he encountered the Russians that he really found out the truth about the David. The Russians shot the David, and Hendricks saw, “From the Remains of David a metal wheel rolled.” (Dick, 166) After this Hendricks was informed by the Russians that the David was the evolution of the claws, and even with is tab, he had no control over it. This shows that man is to naïve to play God because, when the claws were created there was no intent of them evolving, but they ended up evolving on their own. Not only did they evolve but they improved upon their original intent to the point where they were uncontrollable. What this proves is that when Hendricks’ men created the claws they really had no idea what would become of them. After that, the idea that man is to naïve to play God is shown in a very different way in “Flowers for Algernon”. In “Flowers for Algernon” the doctors preformed the operation on Charlie without really knowing whether or not the operation would be permanent or temporary. In the end the operation ended up being temporary leaving Charlie the way he used to be. This shows that man
The biggest epiphany in “The Second Variety” was right after Tasso left in Hendricks’ ship and, “behind the wounded soldier came two Tasso’s walking side by side.” (Dick, 190) This is where Hendricks realized he had sent one of the evolved claws to the only safe place left, the moon base. This is what really left me with the impression that when man plays the role of God and creates something, there is nothing good that can come out of it. What this moment in the story implies is that Hendricks is now responsible for the end of the human race. Although It is not completely his fault because he wasn’t the sole creator of the robots. After that, the main epiphany in “Flowers for Algernon” was in progress report 13 when it said, “It happened today. Algernon bit me.” (Keyes, 694) What Charlie realized at this part of the story was that the operation wasn’t permanent and he would eventually go back to the way he was. Unlike Hendricks in “The Second Variety”, this epiphany was not so negative, it only effected him, not all of man kind. This really showed that the operation should have never been performed, and man shouldn’t have played God. It showed that man shouldn’t play God because the outcome of it is nothing good, in Charlie’s case at this moment in the story he was left with no friends and