Without much ado.. I am diving into the story straight!!
Charlie Gordon is a 32-year old mentally-disabled janitor working in a bakery.
......Charlie substitutes his IQ of 68 with a heart as large as the Grand Canyon!!!
His only ambition in life is to get as smart as the rest of the world.
Charlie dully understands that education will make him smarter and enrolls himself in a school for “special” people. He continues to sweep floors in the bakery during the day hours and attends classes in the night time. His memory is very weak and he spends grueling hours grappling with basic concepts. However he plods on relentlessly.
His motivation to be “smart” is so immense that he is picked by a group of scientists to undergo a difficult medical surgery tried earlier on a lab-mouse, Algernon
The entire story is narrated in the form of Charlie’s “progris riport”.
The journal starts with Charlie’s naïve feelings and associations. It is full of grammatical and spelling errors. It shows the reader his innocence and simplistic needs.
Charlie participates in various tests for the surgery, one such test is solving a maze…Algernon beats Charlie in solving the maze.
"I dint know mice were so smart."
After the surgery the journal entries change dramatically.
Charlie’s increasing mental prowess is paralleled with Algernon’s mental enhancement.
As Charlie gains awareness and reasoning many uncomfortable home-truths hit him.
-Charlie believed that his fellow buddies in the bakery were his best friends. His memory back-tracks his earlier experiences with them, where their jokes and slurs are outright cruel. He awakens to the fact, that they were only having a laugh at his expense, inviting him out with them so that they can entertain their girlfriends and conduct their own freak show.
His faith is broken, he almost wishes he could go back being “dim” when he was not smart but remained happy.
“Some times somebody will say hey lookit Frank, or Joe or even Gimpy. He really pulled a Charlie Gordon that time. I don’t know why they say it but they always laff and I laff too."
"I never knew before that Joe and Frank and the others liked to have me around just to make fun of me. Now I know what they mean wen they say ’to pull a Charlie Gordon.’ I’m ashamed."
-Charlie’s awe for his school teacher, Alice, turns into love and they embark on a stormy relationship, until Alice cannot handle it anymore. Charlie’s growing intelligence makes Alice feel inferior and she breaks away from the relationship.
"One thing? I, like: about, Dear Miss Kinnian: (thats, the way? it goes; in a business, letter (if I ever go! into business?) is that, she: always gives me’ a reason" when - I ask. She"s a gen’ius! I cou’d be smart like-her, Punctuation , is? fun!"
-Charlie’s intelligence keeps increasing until he surpasses the doctors who treat him.
They are not happy.
Charlie realizes that the doctors were feeling benevolent towards “Charlie –The moon-eyed puppy who worshipped the ground they walked” and not “Charlie - the superior brain”
His genius forces the doctors to look in the face of their own incompetence.
"I was seeing them clearly for the first time - not gods or even heroes, but just two men worried about getting something out of their work."
Charlie’s emotional growth does not match his intellectual metamorphosis. And he still craves for acceptance while his artificially engineered intellect cuts him from the rest of the world; he turns into a lonely, arrogant man.
I re-read this part a million times until I remotely understood what Daniel Keyes was hammering into me….Age has nothing to do with Intelligence, the older one grows there is no guarantee that he/she would turn smarter. But wisdom, Yes!..With age one turns wise enough to endure the human quirkiness.
At this point, Algernon reaches the pinnacle of intelligence and starts to deteriorate. Charlie takes over from the Doctors, completes what they start and writes the famous thesis - “Algernon-Gordon” effect.
The synopsis of this thesis goes this way; the speed with which one’s intelligence accelerates due to the surgery, proportionate deterioration happens with the same speed.
Charlie’s intellect deteriorates as well; He fights it. The decay however is inevitable.
A pleasant, friendly eager-to-please child evolved into a super-genius and sinks back into vapid vacuum…. A 32-year old grown man is unable to defend himself when slapped. He stands petrified when someone addresses him in a loud voice. A genius turned into a muddle, peeing in his pants and the shame that engulfs him is tear-jerking.
The book is so named as this remains his last wish:-
"please if you get a chanse put some flowrs on Algernons grave in the bak yard...".
Daniel Keyes takes us through Charlie Gordon’s life in a heart wrenching fashion.
Flowers for Algernon is an ageless, poignant story.
P.S: Please no cute comments about Stuart Little!!