Summary:
Exploresthe book Flowers for Algernon. Describes the emotional growth pf Charlie and how it corresponds with his intellectual growth. Debates the positive and negative aspects of each type of growth.
In the novel Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes, Charlie has much growth after the operation. One of the many mental and physical growths he collected was emotion. I noticed that as soon as Charlie started developing emotions they were all bad feelings and negative thoughts. Emotions can be good or bad; but for Charlie it was all downhill.
The story follows the mind and life of a mentally retarded man, Charlie Gordon, who is 32 years old. Charlie attends a night school in hope that he will one day be intelligent like his teacher, Miss Kinnian, who he considers a "genius." When offered the chance to have his IQ tripled, despite the risks and the chance of losing it all, he agrees. Throughout the time of his knowledge he experiences love, betrayal, heartbreak, embarrassment, loneliness, loses his job at a bakery due to his intelligence and grows in many other ways. Charlie receives special teaching and He becomes near genius level, feels emotions and evolves more of a personality. In the end he ends up losing all of his knowledge but keeps his emotional state.
While Charlie was still mentally retarded he was always happy and thought everyone was his friend. He was very determined, confident and had lots of motivation to one day be smart. For example when he says,
" I felt proud when he said not every body with an eye-q of 68 had that thing."(Referring to motivation, PG 203)
Charlie also shows happiness when stating,
"Burt said yes and he smild and that maid me feel good"(pg 201)
Once Charlie received the operation he developed a personality and started feeling emotions. I started noticing negative thoughts and emotions such as: feeling dumb, thinking things are stupid, and loneliness. He proves these by stating,
"People don't talk to me much anymore or kid around the way they used to. It makes the job kind of lonely."(Pg 211)
He also shows these through saying,
"It's because I'm so dumb and I don't even know when I'm doing something dumb."(Pg 210)
Charlie also finds out that people aren't really his friends and he feels sadness, gets sick frequently and is ashamed after a party; aren't parties supposed to be fun? He says,
"Now I know what it means when they say 'to pull a Charlie Gordon.' I'm ashamed."
Months after Charlie's operation he feels many feelings including anger and disbelief. He also becomes depressed after realizing that he was going to become mentally retarded again. He even pretty much just goes crazy knowing he's going back to where he started. Charlie was hurt before by many people he thought were his friends and now he has to experience the worst, hurting him self. He proves these by saying
" Only a short time ago, I learned that people laughed at me. Now I can see that unknowingly I joined with them in laughing at myself. That hurts most of all" (pg 215)
Even though Charlie loses almost everything in the end he still holds on to on the emotion piece of it. All though he does go through many different emotional states the majority of them are gloomy. But was all of this mania really worth it? He thought being smart would really create happiness for him but he mostly felt unhappiness and emptiness. So even though emotion is a good thing to have and be able to feel and experience just ask your self this question, does intelligence equal happiness?
This is the complete article, containing 570 words
(approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page).
