A Synopsis of Flowers for Algernon, a Short Story and Novel by Daniel Keyes
A mentally challenged man named Charlie Gordon, who has an IQ of 68, lives in New York City. He has a teacher named Alice Kinnian at a school that teaches mentally challenged adults. Kinnian recommends Charlie to a group of scientists who are testing out a type of surgery that could boost his intelligence. Dr. Strauss and Professor Nemur, who are the lead members of the test surgery, tell Charlie to record things down in his journal. It is soon revealed that Charlie works a menial job as a janitor and delivery boy in Donner's Bakery.
The other men working at these jobs with him tease him, but he lacks understanding of their insults and still thinks they are nice to him. Soon after, the scientists perform the operation on Charlie after testing it on a white mouse named Algernon. A while after, Charlie notices changes in his smartness. Alice Kinnian helps him understand certain concepts better, and he invents new ideas for his job at the bakery. Charlie starts to fall in love with Alice. Someone at the bakery begins stealing things from the owner, and Charlie gets laid off from his job in an attempt to end the crime. Charlie remembers painful memories of his childhood, and they interfere with his attraction to Alice. Charlie goes to a science convention in Chicago with Strauss and Nemur, but he frees Algernon and escapes to an apartment in New York because he dislikes Nemur's treatment of him. Charlie develops a relationship with his new neighbor in New York named Fay Lillman.
However, Charlie grows a desire to do research on how the scientists increased his intelligence, so he heads back to the research lab. Algernon the mouse eventually loses intelligence and dies soon after. Charlie visits his family in order to clear his mind of his bad past. He speaks to his demential mother, who congratulates him. Unfortunately, she holds a butcher knife to him. After leaving, he finally makes peace with his past. Continuing his research, he realizes that Nemur's prediction mistakenly included an element that would make Charlie lose his intelligence. Calling this the Algernon-Gordon Effect, he soon suffers a relapse of his mental problems after getting drunk. He forgets almost every aspect of his life, and he decides to live in a home for disabled people. He wants the reader of his journal to put nice flowers on the grave of Algernon the mouse. The main purpose of the book does not entirely relate to evolution, but it hints at it. Before Charlie underwent the operation to increase his intelligence, Algernon the mouse's brain was "artificially evolved" by the scientists. The book did not greatly detail the process of the operation, but it is known that it had flaws.
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After Charlie underwent the operation, he started to lose his intelligence after he drank too much alcohol at a bar. It can be concluded that Nemur's prediction on the effects of the operation on Charlie did not mention that alcohol or a possible second substance could cause the patient to revert back to having a lack of intelligence. Although Charlie's brain evolved from the operation, it devolved since the whole surgery involved the artificial evolution of human organs rather than the natural evolution. In conclusion, the novel teaches the imperfections of certain operations that could greatly evolve human bodily functions.
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A Synopsis of Flowers for Algernon, a Short Story and Novel by Daniel Keyes. (2023, Apr 16). Retrieved from https://phdessay.com/a-synopsis-of-flowers-for-algernon-a-short-story-and-novel-by-daniel-keyes/
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