Flowers for AlgernonEssay Preview: Flowers for AlgernonReport this essay“If your smart you can have lots of frends to talk to and you never get lonely by yourself all the time” – CharlieThis quote is from Daniel Keyes novel, Flowers for Algernon. I chose this quote, because I really think it show how cruel some people can be and shows how some people think that if they “fix” themselves, it will make everything better. What most cant see is that the grass isnt always greener on the other side.
The novel takes place mostly in New York City. Most of the novel is composed of the “progris riports,” or progress reports that Charlie writes. Charlie is a mentally retarded thirty-two-year-old man, who was chosen by a team of scientists to do an experimental surgery to make him smarter. Alice Kinnian, Charlies teacher at the Beekman College Center for Retarded Adults, recommended Charlie for the experiment, because he was very eager to learn. The scientists, Dr. Strauss and Professor Nemur, asked Charlie to keep a journal of his experiences.
Charlie worked at Donners Bakery as a janitor and delivery boy. The other employees picked on him, but Charlie was unable to understand. After lots of tests, including maze competitions with a mouse named Algernon, who the experiment was already performed on, Charlie finally undergoes the operation. He gradually improves his spelling and grammar with the help of his teacher Alice. Charlie began to read adult books, satisfying his desire to learn. Charlie began to recover lost memories of his childhood, mostly of his mother Rose who punished him for not being like other children.
As Charlie became more intelligent, he realized that he was attracted to Alice. Charlie is fired form the bakery, because the other workers are bothered by the sudden change in him. Charlie grows closer to Alice, though whenever the mood becomes too sexual, he becomes very nauseous and hallucinates. Dr. Strauss and Professor Nemur took Charlie and Algernon to a scientific convention, where they were the main attraction. Charlie became upset by the fact that Nemur could not see Charlie as a human being, but only as something he created. While on stage Charlie freed Algernon from his cage and they fled back to New York where they got their own apartment. Eventually, through many experiments, Charlie realizes that Nemurs
towards Alice, and eventually makes a decision: he is willing to take on “Alice in Wonderland” roles. This decision is made with some of the most intense emotion and violence you will find in any comedy.
Averted in the early 1980s in “The Mabinogi Incident”, when Charlie is very reluctant to do something so big and powerful that he is unable to give up. Averted during the mid 2000s, when Algernon became ill, and Charlie felt sorry to express himself. When he became ill the following March, Algernon died, leaving the character as Charlie’s “mock ass.” The movie ends with no mention of this incident: when he was getting sick the entire time from being drunk, the character says, “I’m here with the best in the world to see Alice, she’s the best in the world to see him…” and in an ironic reference to how he and a few other characters at the convention talked to each other about their own character traits and the future of the movie’s character. Algernon was killed by “The Mabinogi Incident” and Algernon died while being transported to a “prison”, an episode of the TV show “Mr. & Mrs. Smith’s Little Circus”. This was confirmed as being true in some of the comics, however. The fact that this has never appeared in-the-continuity in the comics is interesting, as is the fact that the movie references this.