Why Miss Kinnian From Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes, Is a Libra

Based on group opinion, it appears that Miss Kinnian in Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes fits into the characteristics of a Libra. Libras are considered extremely charming and beautiful, just like Miss Kinnian. They also have the ability to make any person feel special and to keep things balanced and fair.

In the story, Charlie fell in love with Miss Kinnian because of her charm and beauty. Additionally, Miss Kinnian was able to teach people with mental handicaps and make them feel good about themselves. She recommends Charlie for the operation and tells him that he deserves the surgery most of all and that it will give him a second chance. Miss Kinnian visits to the laboratory after the surgery to teach Charlie as well. Librans are also very diplomatic and are skilled at building partnerships. They always listen and understand both sides of a story. On April 154, Charlie talks to Miss Kinnian about how all of his friends are smart and that they wouldn't be mean to him. Miss Kinnian ends up crying because she feels bad for him and doesn't want him to find out the truth about his friends and how they are really making fun of him. She explains rules of grammar, spelling, and punctuation to Charlie and becomes a better friend to him. A final characteristic of Librans is that they can be indecisive since they always try to keep everything fair.

After Charlie surpasses Miss Kinnian's intelligence level, Miss Kinnian becomes unsure if she should have recommended Charlie for the surgery in the first place. She is afraid that Charlie will become too intelligent and leave her behind. If one year passed since the end of the story, my group and I believe that Miss Kinnian would still be working in the adult night school. We think that she would start studying the habits of her mentally handicapped students and submit any information that she finds to Dr. Strauss and Dr. Nemur. She does this in hopes that they can find a wav to permanently increase the intelligence of mentally retarded people on a lower scale, just to advance them to the same level of an average person. She read Charlie's letter which inspired her to help other people to have a "second chance" as she tells Charlie in Progress Report 4. She rereads all of Charlie's old progress reports and takes note of the gradual increase and eventually sharp decline of Charlie's intelligence levels as shown in his writing. Her research has greatly assisted Dr. Strauss and Dr. Nemur in their experiments. In the past three months, she found out about Charlie's death and has mourned it every day.

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She hides her sadness from her students but at night she cries because she feels guilty that she suggested Charlie to do the experiment in the first place. The one thing that brought her spirits up though was when she read Charlie's letter every night. In the letter, he had told her not to be sorry for him and that he was grateful to know how it felt to be smart, even if it didn't last long. In honor of Charlie, Miss Kinnian goes to Algernon's grave every week and lays flowers down, just like she wanted him to do in the letter. She will never forget the magnificent life and death of Charlie Gordon.

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