Summary:
Charlie Gordon, a mentally retarded thirty-two-year-old man, is chosen by a team of scientists to undergo an experimental surgery designed to boost his intelligence. Alice Kinnian, Charlie’s teacher at the Beekman College Center for Retarded Adults, has recommended Charlie for the experiment because of his exceptional eagerness to learn. The directors of the experiment, Dr. Strauss and Professor Nemur, ask Charlie to keep a journal. The entire narrative of Flowers for Algernon is composed of the “progress reports” that Charlie writes.
Charlie works at Donner’s Bakery in New York City as a janitor and delivery boy. The other employees often taunt him and pick on him, but Charlie is unable to understand that he is the subject of mockery. He believes that his coworkers are good friends. After a battery of tests—including a maze-solving competition with a mouse named Algernon, who has already had the experimental surgery performed on him—Charlie undergoes the operation. He is initially disappointed that there is no immediate change in his intellect, but with work and help from Alice, he gradually improves his spelling and grammar. Charlie begins to read adult books, slowly at first, then voraciously, filling his brain with knowledge from many academic fields. He shocks the workers at the bakery by inventing a process designed to improve productivity. Charlie also begins to recover lost memories of his childhood, most of which involve his mother, Rose, who resented and often brutally punished Charlie for not being normal like other children.
As Charlie becomes more intelligent, he realizes that he is deeply attracted to Alice. She insists on keeping their relationship professional, but it is obvious that she shares Charlie’s attraction. When Charlie discovers that one of the bakery employees is stealing from Mr. Donner, he is uncertain what to do until Alice tells him to trust his heart. Delighted by the realization that he is capable of solving moral dilemmas on his own, Charlie confronts the worker and forces him to stop cheating Donner. Not long afterward, Charlie is let go from the bakery because the other workers are disturbed by the sudden change in him, and because Donner can see that Charlie no longer needs his charity. Charlie grows closer to Alice, though whenever the mood becomes too intimate, he experiences a sensation of panic and feels as if his old disabled self is watching him. Charlie recovers memories of his mother beating him for the slightest sexual impulses, and he realizes that this past trauma is likely responsible for his inability to make love to Alice.
Dr. Strauss and Professor Nemur take Charlie and Algernon to a scientific convention in Chicago, where they are the star exhibits. Charlie has become frustrated by Nemur’s refusal to recognize his humanity. He feels that Nemur treats him like just another lab animal, even though it is disturbingly clear that Charlie’s scientific knowledge has advanced beyond Nemur’s. Charlie wreaks havoc at the convention by freeing Algernon from his cage while they are onstage. Charlie flees back to New York with Algernon and gets his own apartment, where the scientists cannot find him. He realizes that Nemur’s hypothesis contains an error and that there is a possibility that his intelligence gain will only be temporary.
Charlie meets his neighbor, an attractive, free-spirited artist named Fay Lillman. Charlie does not tell Fay about his past, and he is able to consummate a sexual relationship with her. The foundation that has funded the experiment gives Charlie dispensation to do his own research, so he returns to the lab. However, his commitment to his work begins to consume him, and he drifts away from Fay.
Algernon’s intelligence begins to slip, and his behavior becomes erratic. Charlie worries that whatever happens to Algernon will soon happen to him as well. Algernon eventually dies. Fearing a regression to his previous level of intelligence, Charlie visits his mother and sister in order to try to come to terms with his past. He finds the experience moving, thrilling, and devastating. Charlie’s mother, now a demented old woman, expresses pride in his accomplishments, and his sister is overjoyed to see him. However, Rose suddenly slips into a delusional flashback and attacks Charlie with a butcher knife. He leaves sobbing, but he feels that he has finally overcome his painful background and become a fully developed individual.
Charlie succeeds in finding the error in Nemur’s hypothesis, scientifically proving that a flaw in the operation will cause his intelligence to vanish as quickly as it has come. Charlie calls this phenomenon the “Algernon-Gordon Effect.” As he passes through a stage of average intelligence on his way back to retardation, Charlie enjoys a brief, passionate relationship with Alice, but he sends her away as he senses the return of his old self. When Charlie’s regression is complete, he briefly returns to his old job at the bakery, where his coworkers welcome him back with kindness.
Charlie forgets that he is no longer enrolled in Alice’s night-school class for retarded adults, and he upsets her by showing up. In fact, Charlie has forgotten their entire romantic relationship. Having decided to remove himself from the people who have known him and now feel sorry for him, he checks himself into a home for disabled adults. His last request is for the reader of his manuscript to leave fresh flowers on Algernon’s grave.
Characters:
Charlie Gordon
Charlie is the narrator and the main character of the novel, and his miraculous transformation from mental disability to genius sets the stage for Keyes to address a number of broad themes and issues. Charlie’s lack of intelligence has made him a trusting and friendly man, as he assumes that the people in his life—most notably, his coworkers at Donner’s Bakery—are as well intentioned as he is. As his intelligence grows, however, Charlie gains perspective on his past and present. He realizes that people have often taken advantage of him and have been cruel to him for sport, knowing that he would not understand. Likewise, he realizes that when people have been kind to him, it usually has been out of condescension or out of an awareness that he is inferior. These realizations cause Charlie to grow suspicious of nearly everyone around him. Interestingly, the experimental operation elevates Charlie’s intelligence to such an extent that his new genius distances him from people as much as his disability does. Charlie eventually convinces himself that he has lost feeling even for Alice Kinnian, the one person whom he feels has never betrayed him and the only one for whom he has maintained a deep affection throughout his life.
Obsessed by an imaginary ideal of normalcy, Rose initially responded to Charlie’s mental disability with denial. She insisted that her son was normal, and she developed a delusional theory that he was brilliant but was cursed by jealous neighborhood mothers. Her refusal to accept her son’s disability was demonstrated by her decision to name Charlie’s younger sister Norma because it sounds like “normal.” After Norma’s birth, Rose turned her full attention to Norma’s success and tried to ignore Charlie altogether. Signs of Charlie’s progression toward adulthood, especially his manifestations of sexuality, infuriated Rose. She demanded that Charlie be removed from her home. By denying his existence, she also denied what she perceived to be her failure as a mother.
When Charlie, now brilliant after his operation, visits an aged Rose near the end of the novel, her capacity for denial has grown into full-fledged dementia. She switches back and forth from recognizing Charlie to thinking he is a stranger, and back and forth from pride at his recent accomplishments to an irrational fear that he has come back to molest Norma. In her old age, Rose has been driven entirely mad by her overwhelming yet doomed desire to be what she perceives as normal.
Alice Kinnian
Alice Kinnian is the one person with whom Charlie comes to experience a truly fulfilling personal relationship. It is fitting that throughout the novel Alice represents the human warmth and kindness that persist in the face of the intellectual and scientific focus of many of the other characters. Alice teaches literacy skills to mentally retarded adults because she cares about and enjoys working with her students; she does not believe that their disabilities make them lesser human beings. She takes genuine satisfaction in helping people and recommends Charlie for Nemur and Strauss’s experiment because she admires Charlie’s desire to learn. Charlie appreciates Alice’s concern for his well-being; she is a constant presence in his earliest progress reports, even though she is not a member of the scientific team that is examining him.
n Alice’s concern and affection lie the seeds of her eventual romantic love for Charlie. Though she is often deeply confused throughout their relationship, uncertain of what is and is not appropriate in their unique situation, Alice displays unwavering care for Charlie as his IQ boomerangs up and back down again. Her ability to accept Charlie as a person of any level of intelligence sets Alice apart from the other characters in the novel, who consistently judge Charlie only on his intellect. Though she is driven by emotion, Alice is not at all anti-intellectual; on the contrary, she is fascinated by academia and high culture. Though intellect and emotion seem to be opposed throughout the novel, Alice’s intellectual leanings demonstrate that one need not sacrifice his or her ability to love in order to enjoy a life of the mind.
Professor Nemur
If Alice represents the possibility of an emotionally healthy adulthood, Nemur represents the opposite. He is a man of great intellect but little ability to relate to others. Unlike his partner, Dr. Strauss, Nemur is never interested in Charlie’s human emotions; he cares only about Charlie’s quantifiable progress as an experimental subject. Professor Nemur thinks of Charlie just as he thinks of Algernon—as a laboratory animal. Pressured by a domineering wife, Nemur is desperate to advance his career and longs for his peers to regard him as brilliant. Nemur cannot stand to be shown up by anyone—not by Strauss, and certainly not by Charlie. He is deeply perturbed when Charlie surpasses him intellectually and takes command of the experiment. Though Charlie resents Nemur for most of the novel, we see after the operation that Charlie himself is potentially at risk of becoming cold and loveless like Nemur.
Rose Gordon
Obsessed by an imaginary ideal of normalcy, Rose initially responded to Charlie’s mental disability with denial. She insisted that her son was normal, and she developed a delusional theory that he was brilliant but was cursed by jealous neighborhood mothers. Her refusal to accept her son’s disability was demonstrated by her decision to name Charlie’s younger sister Norma because it sounds like “normal.” After Norma’s birth, Rose turned her full attention to Norma’s success and tried to ignore Charlie altogether. Signs of Charlie’s progression toward adulthood, especially his manifestations of sexuality, infuriated Rose. She demanded that Charlie be removed from her home. By denying his existence, she also denied what she perceived to be her failure as a mother.
When Charlie, now brilliant after his operation, visits an aged Rose near the end of the novel, her capacity for denial has grown into full-fledged dementia. She switches back and forth from recognizing Charlie to thinking he is a stranger, and back and forth from pride at his recent accomplishments to an irrational fear that he has come back to molest Norma. In her old age, Rose has been driven entirely mad by her overwhelming yet doomed desire to be what she perceives as normal.
Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.
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
The 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.
Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
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.
Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
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.
Quizz:
1. Who asks Charlie to keep his progress reports?
2. How old is Charlie at the start of the novel?
3. Why does Alice recommend Charlie for the experiment?
4. Who supervises Algernon’s testing?
5. In which progress report do Charlie’s punctuation, spelling, and grammar improve most significantly?
6. Where is the scientists’ convention held?
7. Where is the Center for Retarded Adults where Charlie takes classes?
8. What is the first hard book that Charlie reads?
9. What does Charlie do when he learns that Gimpy has been stealing from Mr. Donner?
10. Which two characters suggest to Charlie that increasing his intelligence may be against God’s will?
11. What job does Charlie’s father have when Charlie finds him?
12. What book does Charlie tear apart near the end of the novel?
13. Which of the following is a reason that Fay proposes for Charlie’s inability to make love to her?
14. What is the range of Charlie’s IQ in the novel?
15. Who threatens Charlie with a knife?
16. Who does Charlie often hallucinate is watching him?
17. To whom does Charlie lose his virginity?
18. What is the name of the companion mouse that Fay buys for Algernon?
19. What is the name of the quack doctor to whom Rose takes the six-year-old Charlie?
20. What name does Charlie give to his scientific theorem?
21. What language is Charlie outraged to learn that Professor Nemur does not speak?
22. Of what does Nemur accuse Charlie during their argument after the cocktail party?
23. What does Alice tell Charlie she will do when he has reverted to his original IQ?
24. Where does Charlie go to live at the end of the novel?
25. In what month does Charlie die?