Flowers for Algernon (1966) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

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Summary edit see section history

Characters/People edit see section history

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• Charlie Gordon: Narrator and Protagonist- A mentally disabled adult, 32 years old; he's a janitor and his IQ is 68.
• Alice Kinnian / Miss Kinnian: Charlie's teacher at the Beekman College for Retarded Adults, and an example of the part of the society who do treat disabled people in a compassionate and understanding manner. She has brown eyes and feathery brown hair that comes to the top of her neck. She’s only thirty-four!
• Doctor Strauss: Doctor who works at Beekman College, functions as a medical researcher; a collegue of Professor Nemur and a phyciatrist. 50 years old.
• Professor Nemur: Scientist who works at Beekman College, functions as a science researcher; a collegue of Doctor Strauss.
• Algernon: Lab mouse who underwent the same operation as Charlie.
• Fay: Charlie's neighbor. Lovely, friendly, and trusting. She is a little crazy and wild as an artist and dancer.
• Mr. Donner: Owns the bakery where Charlie works, friend of Charlie's uncle.
• Rose Gordon: Charlie's mother
• Norma Gordon: Charlie's younger sister who was often unkind to him as a child
• Professor Nemur: A science professor seeking fame. He is one of the two main professors involved in Charlie's surgery. 60 years old.
• Gimpy: Employee at the bakery where Charlie works
• Joe Carp: Employee at the bakery where Charlie works
• Burt Selden: Works at Beekman College on Algernon and Charlie's experiment, graduate student at the university
• Frank: Employee at the bakery where Charlie works
• Matt: Charlie's father who sells barber supplies
• Amos Borg: Foreman at Donnegans
• Ernie: The office guy at the factory
• Miss Gold: Charlie's teacher in Sixth grade
• Mr. Donnegan: Owner of the factory
• Mrs Flynn: Charlie's landlord.
• Ellen: A girl at a party Charlie was invited to.
• Fanny Girden: The only person at the factory that didn't want Charlie fired.
• Miltie: Charlie's cousin

Quotes edit see section history

• “I see now that the path I choose through the maze makes me what I am. I am not only a thing, but also a way of being - one of the many ways - and knowing the paths I have followed and the ones left to tak will help me understand what I am becoming.”

  Charlie Gordon

• “She was right in refusing to torture herself by being with me. We no longer had anything in common. Simple conversation has become strained. And all there was between us now was the embarrassed silence and unsatisfied longing in a darkened room.”

  Charlie Gordon

• “He's just an ordinary man trying to do a great man's work, while the great men are all busy trying to make bombs.”

  Burt

• “A child may not know how to feed itself, or what to eat, yet it knows hunger.”

  Charlie Gordon

• “I am afraid. Not of life, or death, or nothingness, but of wasting it as if I had never been.”

  Charlie Gordon

• “It's painful to think about that, but what we have, I suspect, is more than most people find in a lifetime.”

  Charlie Gordon

• “How strange it is that people of honest feelings and sensibility, who would not take advantage of a man born without arms or legs or eyes--how such people think nothing of abusing a man born with low intelligence. It infuriated me to remember that not too long ago I --like this boy-- had foolishly played the clown.”

  Charlie Gordon

• Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers

• Now I understand one of the important reasons for going to college and getting an education is to learn that the things you've believed in all your life aren't true, and that nothing is what it appears to be.

  Highlighted by 100 Kindle customers

• How strange it is that people of honest feelings and sensibility, who would not take advantage of a man born without arms or legs or eyes—how such people think nothing of abusing a man born with low intelligence.

  Highlighted by 85 Kindle customers

• I see now that the path I choose through that maze makes me what I am. I am not only a thing, but also a way of being—one of many ways—and knowing the paths I have followed and the ones left to take will help me understand what I am becoming.

  Highlighted by 78 Kindle customers

• Intelligence without the ability to give and receive affection leads to mental and moral breakdown, to neurosis, and possibly even psychosis.

  Highlighted by 73 Kindle customers

• intelligence and education that hasn't been tempered by human affection isn't worth a damn.'

  Highlighted by 72 Kindle customers

• If your smart you can have lots of frends to talk to and you never get lonley by yourself all the time.

  Highlighted by 68 Kindle customers

• P.S. please if you get a chanse put some flowrs on Algernons grave in the bak yard.

  Highlighted by 52 Kindle customers

• The depressing thing is that so many of the ideas on which our psychologists base their beliefs about human intelligence, memory, and learning are all wishful thinking.

  Highlighted by 44 Kindle customers

• And she said mabey they got no rite to make me smart because if god wantid me to be smart he would have made me born that way. And what about Adem and Eev and the sin with the tree of nowlege and eating the appel and the fall. And mabey Prof Nemur and Dr Strauss was tampiring with things they got no rite to tampir with.

  Highlighted by 42 Kindle customers

• 'The more intelligent you become the more problems you'll have, Charlie. Your intellectual growth is going to outstrip your emotional growth.

  Highlighted by 36 Kindle customers

Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Beakman Center for Retarded Adults: School where Charlie attends classes for retarded adults
• Donner's Bakery: Charlie has been working for years at the bakery sweeping and doing deliveries

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Themes & Symbolism edit see section history

• Mistreatment of the Mentally Disabled: The fictional idea of artificially augmenting or diminishing intelligence enables Keyes to offer a telling portrayal of society’s mistreatment of the mentally disabled. As Charlie grows more intelligent after his operation, effectively transforming from a mentally retarded man to a genius, he realizes that people have always based their attitudes toward him on feelings of superiority. For the most part, other people have treated Charlie not only as an intellectual inferior but also as less of a human being than they are. While some, like his coworkers at the bakery, have treated him with outright cruelty, others have tried to be kind but ultimately have been condescending in their charity.After his operation, Charlie himself drifts into a condescending and disrespectful attitude toward the disabled to a certain extent. Charlie consciously wants to treat his new intellectual inferiors as he wishes others had treated him. When he sees patrons at a diner laughing at a mentally retarded busboy, he demands that the patrons recognize the boy’s humanity. However, when Charlie visits the Warren State Home, he is horrified by the dim faces of the disabled people he meets, and he is unable to muster any warmth toward them. Charlie fears the patients at Warren State because he does not want to accept that he was once like them and may soon be like them again. We may even interpret Charlie’s reaction as his own embodiment of the same fear of abnormality that has driven his mother to madness.Thus, while Keyes condemns the act of mistreating the mentally disabled, he also displays an understanding of why this mistreatment occurs, enabling his readers to see through the eyes of someone who has experienced such ridicule firsthand. Charlie struggles with a tendency toward the same prejudice and condescension he has seen in other people. However, Charlie’s dual perspective allows him to understand that he is as human as anyone else, regardless of his level of intelligence.
• The Tension between Intellect and Emotion: he fact that Charlie’s mental retardation affects both his intellectual and emotional development illustrates the difficulty—but not the impossibility—of developing both aspects simultaneously and without conflict. Charlie is initially warmhearted and trusting, but as his intelligence increases he grows cold, arrogant, and disagreeable. The more he understands about the world, the more he recoils from human contact. At his loneliest point, in Progress Report 12, Charlie shockingly decides that his genius has effectively erased his love for Alice.Professor Nemur and Fay indicate the incompatibility of intellect and emotion. Nemur is brilliant but humorless and friendless. Conversely, Fay acts foolishly and illogically because she is ruled entirely by her feelings. It is only with Alice’s encouragement that Charlie finally realizes he does not have to choose between his brain and his heart, the extremes represented by Nemur and Fay. Charlie learns to integrate intellect and emotion, finding emotional pleasure in both his intellectual work and his relationships. It is in this phase that he finds true fulfillment with Alice.
• The Persistence of the Past in the Present: Charlie’s recovery of his childhood memories after his operation illustrates how significantly his past is embedded in his understanding of the present. Charlie’s past resurfaces at key points in his present experience, taking the form of the old Charlie, whom the new Charlie perceives as a separate entity that exists outside of himself. In a sense, the past, as represented by the old Charlie, literally keeps watch over the present. When Charlie longs to make love to Alice, the old Charlie panics and distracts him—a sign that the shame Rose instilled in Charlie is still powerful, even if he cannot remember the origin of this shame.Charlie cannot move forward with his emotional life until he understands and deals with the traumas of childhood. Similar ties to the past control Charlie’s mother. When Charlie returns to see Rose, she still harbors her old resentment over Charlie’s lack of normalcy—even after his intelligence levels have increased dramatically. Rose’s attempt to attack Charlie with a knife illustrates that for her, just as for Charlie, the past interferes with her actions and concerns in the present. Rose cannot separate her memories of the retarded Charlie from the genius Charlie who comes to visit her in the flesh. The harrowing turn of events at this meeting is a tragic reminder of the past’s pervasive influence on the present.
• Changes in Grammar, Spelling, and Punctuation: Charlie’s initial leaps forward in mental ability are conveyed less by what he writes than by how he writes. Keyes signals Charlie’s changing mental state through the level of accuracy or inaccuracy of the grammar, spelling, and punctuation in Charlie’s progress reports. The first sentence of the novel, typical of Charlie’s early reports, is rife with errors: “Dr Strauss says I shoud rite down what I think and remembir and evrey thing that happins to me from now on.” By Progress Report 9, we see Charlie’s immense progress in his composition of flawless sentences: “I had a nightmare last night, and this morning, after I woke up, I free-associated the way Dr. Strauss told me to do when I remember my dreams.” Similarly, Keyes initially conveys the loss of Charlie’s intelligence at the end with the erosion of his grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
• Flashbacks: Starting in Progress Report 9, Charlie is overwhelmed by a series of flashbacks to events from his youth. These flashbacks are provoked by experiences in the present: when Charlie is propositioned by the pregnant woman in Central Park, for example, he recalls his mother’s pregnancy with his sister. All of Charlie’s memories come in the form of such revelations and recall events of which he was not previously aware. These new memories hold new lessons for Charlie about his past and shed new light on his present neuroses. The flashbacks are interspersed with the narrative, so that the stories of Charlie’s present and past intertwine and reflect upon each other.
• The Scientific Method: Charlie and Algernon are subjects in scientific experiments, and as Charlie becomes intelligent, he actually ends up internalizing much of the scientific methodology to which he has been subjected. Not only does Charlie become well versed in the technicalities of science, surpassing Professor Nemur’s knowledge, but he also approaches his emotional problems in a scientific manner. When Charlie realizes that the feelings of shame triggered by his emotional attachment to Alice render him incapable of making love to her, he devises a scientific experiment to test this principle. Charlie decides to try to pretend that Alice is Fay, to whom he is not so emotionally attached, in order to see if doing so will allow him to make love without panicking. Charlie is unable to go through with this experiment, however, because he realizes that he would be effectively placing Alice in the dehumanizing role of laboratory animal, a role he finds deplorable. The scientific pursuit of knowledge becomes Charlie’s guiding principle, but he is aware of the dangers of dehumanization that accompany it. In the end, when Charlie knows his intelligence will desert him and he contemplates suicide, he decides that he must go on living and continue to keep progress reports so that he can pass on knowledge of his unique journey.
• Algernon: As Algernon and Charlie undergo the same operation and the same testing, Algernon’s developments are good predictors of Charlie’s future. When Algernon begins to lose his intelligence, it is a chilling indication that Charlie’s own mental gains will be short-lived. Algernon also symbolizes Charlie’s status as a subject of the scientists: locked in a cage and forced to run through mazes at the scientists’ whim, Algernon is allowed no dignity and no individuality. Charlie’s freeing of Algernon from his cage and simultaneous decision to abandon the laboratory makes Algernon’s physical liberation a symbol of, and a precursor to, his own emotional independence.
• Adam and Eve and the Tree of Knowledge: The story of Adam and Eve, mentioned by Hilda, the nurse, and Fanny at the bakery, and then alluded to again in Charlie’s reading of John Milton’s Paradise Lost, bears a symbolic resemblance to Charlie’s journey from retardation to genius. Adam and Eve eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge, which costs them their innocence and causes them to be cast out of the Garden of Eden. As the forbidden fruit does for Adam and Eve, Charlie’s operation gives him the mental capacity to understand the world that he previously lacks. Just as it does to Adam and Eve, this knowledge causes Charlie to lose his innocence, not only in the form of his sexual virginity, but also in the form of his growing emotional bitterness and coldness. Hilda and Fanny both imply that Charlie, like Adam and Eve, has defied God’s will by becoming more intelligent. Charlie’s discovery that artificially induced intelligence cannot last implies that God or nature abhors unnatural intelligence. However, Keyes leaves us to judge for ourselves whether Charlie deserves the punishment of mental regression.
• The Window: Many of Charlie’s childhood memories involve looking through a window, which symbolizes the emotional distance that Charlie feels from others of normal mental ability. Shunned by his peers because of his disability, he remembers watching the other children play through a window in his apartment. When Charlie becomes intelligent, he often feels as if the boyhood Charlie is watching him through windows. The window represents all of the factors that keep the mentally retarded Charlie from feeling connected to society.Charlie’s increased intelligence enables him to cross over to the other side of the window, a place where members of society accept him. However, in crossing over, Charlie becomes just as distant from his former self as the children he used to see playing outside. When Charlie regresses into disability, he maintains an indefinable sense of his former genius self, but he says, “I dont think its me because its like I see him from the window.” The window is the unbridgeable divide between the two Charlies. The only point at which the brilliant Charlie feels that he is confronting the other Charlie face-to-face is when he drunkenly sees himself in a mirror, effectively a window to one’s interior self.
• Ignorance is Bliss: This theme can be debated as it may have been better for Charlie to remain mentally ill for the rest of his life. When he was like this, he had people he felt were friends, a job, and not a care in life. He was kind to everyone and didn't know the stress of the real world. Of course, it can be said that it is better for Charlie to have the operation because he learns all about life, love, and himself. He remembers his past and becomes a genius with an IQ higher than ever seen before. This intelligence also shows him how people really felt about him and makes it hard for him to be social. The operation raised Charlie's IQ by a lot, but he still had the social and emotional brain of a teenager. Ignorance can be bliss as shown through the novel where Charlie finds happiness going throughout his life without a care in the world.

Series & Lists edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Daniel Keyes (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Awards edit see section history

• Nebula (1966: Best Novel, 1 (tie))
• Hugo (Finalist, 1967: Best Novel)

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: PZ4.K4453 Fl2 PS3561.E769
• Dewey: 813.54

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Its a text book for school going children too (in some English speaking countries)Lexile Score: 910

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction › Classics
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Literary
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Classics
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Contemporary

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

• Flowers for Algernon Wikipedia Page: 1 Background2 Publication history3 Synopsis3.1 Short story3.2 Novel4 Style5 Themes6 Reception6.1 Awards6.2 Censorship6.3 Inspiration7 Film, TV or theatrical adaptations
• Spark Notes: Context, Plot Overview, Character List, Analysis of Major Characters, Themes, Motifs & Symbols, Summary & Analysis, Important Quotations Explained, Key Facts, Study Questions & Essay Topics, Quiz

Movie Connections edit see section history

• Charly (1968) (IMDb): Starring Cliff Robertson and Claire Bloom
• Flowers for Algernon (TV) (IMDb): 2000
• Flowers for Algernon (IMDb): Tentative release in 2013

More Books Like This edit see section history

Books with Additional Background Information edit see section history