The short-story-turned-novel by Daniel Keyes is far from what one may call contemporary. The short story was released in 1958, whilst the fleshed out novel was published in 1966. Since then, it has gone on to win the Nebula Award for Best Novel, has been adapted into a feature film named Charlie in 1968, has continued to inspire further remakes from then forth, and has been re-released during the ensuing decades since.
I had seen one of these remakes many years before I stumbled upon the book. Back during my less literature-passionate days. I was 14 and happened to catch the TV movie adaptation - initially released in the year 2000 - during a sunny Saturday afternoon at my grandparents' home. The TV movie has been slated critically by many since its release, however I remember battling to hold back the tears during that warm weekend back in early 2005.
The subsequent weeks largely consisted of me foraging around my local HMV and Virgin Megastore, attempting to find a copy so I could relive that surprisingly emotional story once again. Upon failure, I decided to give Amazon a shot; only to discover that the film had not yet received a UK release (I'd not yet learned that I could also purchase items off of Amazon US. Nor had I discovered that I was able to watch films from across the pond with a neat little region code breaker app on my computer. As a result, I gave up and decided to look again at a later date.
As is often the case with me, a few weeks later, I had forgotten about that sweet little story and moved on with my life. Until last week, that is, when my dearest mother treated me to a re-released S.F Masterworks copy on Christmas morning.
The story is told via the first-person perspective. Charlie Gordon is our dear Dreamweaver in the tale; taking his readers on an intimate journey as his IQ sores from 68, right up to a staggering 185.
Those initial opening chapters (or progress reports, as they are known as in the novel) were something of a struggle to read. For authenticity's sake, Keyes has rightfully chosen to have Charlie write these opening reports as he would have written them with his original IQ. The spelling is diabolical, the ideas are half-baked, the pacing of each report is all over the shop and the grammer is next to non-existent. Which makes the opening pages of Flowers for Algernon something of a task to work through. It's much like trying to read the assignment of an illiterate child trying to write a report on their weekend away with the family.
Yet what these opening progress reports achieve is an insight into Charlie before any alterations are made to his mind. He's excited, naive about the procedure he's soon to experience, full of admiration of his friends and even somewhat anxious toward some of the tests which he's been pushed through by the researchers running the entire operation. As Charlie tells us about how the Beekman College Center (which he attends for his cognitive struggles) claim he's the best man for the experiment, how his friends often laugh whenever he's around, and how he will soon go under the knife in a way that no human before him has; the reader is led to believe that all is not what it seems. Charlie isn't the brightest light on the Christmas tree, but seems to be happily sailing through a world which he quite clearly fails to understand.
As the pages turn hastily forth, Keyes improves the overall intellectual quality of Charlies' journal entries. After the operation, he is requested to listen to a series of tapes which aim to help him learn. As the progress reports move forward, the quality of Charlies' spelling and understanding of the world around him begins to transform at a rapid rate. Soon enough, he's introduced to the world of gramma. After a few mistakes and annoyances, he's able to construct coherently executed sentences which allow him to express his thoughts and feelings more vividly.
The increase in Charlies' abilities of self-expression expand farther, as he learns to dive back into his past and see how his present feelings have been shaped by personal events that have occured during his preceding years.
Charlies' increasing level of intelligence helps to mold the overall shape of Keyes' novel. It takes on an up-down shaped structure; having Charlie rise higher than he's ever risen before (in an intellectual context) only to have him slowly slip back down toward the two figured IQ which had possessed at the start of the novel. By the time the reader reaches the center of this story, Charlie is nothing short of a genius. So much so, in fact, that he decides to contribute his newly obtained intelligence to help assist with the research that is been put into the very experiment which made it possible in the first place.
As initially mentioned, however, Charlie slowly begins to loose his balance, and his IQ slowly slips back to what it was before he underwent the surgery. Such a fact becomes known the Charlie before the effects kick in; as informed by the experiments' original test pilot - a mouse named Algernon - who's abnormally high IQ (for a mouse) quickly subsides before his brain forces him into a premature grave.
What's most interesting about Flowers for Algernon, however, is the story's secondary plot shape. Whilst Charlie sores in the intellectual department, personally, his life slowly begins to crumble before his eyes. His new found genius allows him to fit the world together; much one would with a jigsaw puzzle. He notices that a colleague he worked with at his local bakery has been short changing his boss for years; his friends are not laughing with him, but at him; his mother sent him away because she was so ashamed at how different he was from all the other children; and how no matter what you do in this world, people will happily stab you in the back if it will benefit them in any way.
The story's secondary shape helps to flesh out one of the novel's most significant themes. Will obtaining great levels of intellect truly make a person happy? If they can understand and perceive the world with the eyes of a clear headed ingenuity, can they truly remain happy when they can see all the horrors of reality playing out before their very eyes? Intellect may grant you imagination and the ability to accomplish many great things, but is it worth it when you are able to see just how dirty our species can truly be?
Furthermore, Flowers for Algernon looks at how others treat those who are seen to have a higher mind than a majority of society. All his old 'friends' and colleagues begin to ostracize him. They hate him for making them feel inferior with his knowledge. Whilst Charlie once made them feel secure in their own intelligence by being the least intelligent individual in the group; he now serves a reminder of all their flaws and inadequacies. They push him out of his job, openly accuse him of going against the bible by 'eating from the tree of knowledge' and force him into a world of isolation.
Such hostility from the individuals whom were once at the center of Charlies' life turn the spot light on a problem has existed amongst society since the dawn of our species; and is a problem which still exists to this very day. People are afraid of difference; regardless of which end of the spectrum of difference they are placed at. When Charlie had an IQ of 68, his mother disowned him and his classmates ridiculed him. In their eyes, he was nothing more than a joke. He was unable to learn like everyone else and was therefore pushed out and ignored by everyone who surrounded him.
Much of the same happens when Charlie flips from being unintelligent to intelligent. Even those who helped deliver the gift of intelligence to him become hostile of his existence. In their eyes, he questions too much, he becomes angry at the actions of others all too frequently, and most importantly, he frightens them. When he was perceived as simple, people accused him of being wrong; when he 'ate from the tree of knowledge' he was still wrong.
Reading this novel in today's world forces me to liken the attitudes of Charlies peers to that of our current societies attitudes toward peoples' bodies. Media tabloids will dehumanize and belittle those who are dangerously overweight. They will poke fun at them, accuse them of draining tax payers money on their health problems and bully them into 'doing something about it'. Much the same now happens if an individual is seen to be underweight. People who weigh less than society deems to be appropriate are attacked an accused of being a bad influence on today's children (the same accusation is fired at overweight individuals), are ridiculed for the appearance of their nude bodies (" " " ") and have a list of health problems continuously recited to them (" " " ").
Regardless of the story raising such a point, however, it never appears to critique those who dislike Charlie after his intellect ascends. In fact, it appears to be slowly more in favor of the idea that ignorance is bliss. Charlie is frequently accused of becoming a cold and angry individual after his operation; and despite him attacking such opinions, Keyes appears to let those against his smartness have the last word.
It would be somewhat unfair to attack the novel for doing this, however, as it is important to remember that we can only understand this book through Charlies' eyes. He is writing the log reports, so any shred of coldness or anger are often even watered down by his choice of words (until the final few log reports that is) or pass by without him ever mentioning such modes of behavior. We hear what goes on inside his head, but we never really get a good enough idea about how his emotions are being portrayed visually.
Which brings us on to Charlies' emotional development during Flowers for Algernon.
As mentioned previously, during the progression of the narrative, Charlie finds himself falling madly in love with his ex-teacher at the Beekman College; Alice Kinnian. It would appear that Charlies' intellectual level was not the only aspect of his existence which was suffering from a case of arrested development, but also his attitude toward members of the opposite gender and sex also. Alice is a young attractive woman, and as Charlie begins to see her for the individual that she he, he begins to fall head over heels for her.
Yet the crux of Charlies' problem is that the other Charlie - the Charlie with the IQ of 68 who still watches him from a short distance - is not prepared to accept the truth of what is happening to him emotionally. It is at this point in the story in which our remarkable protagonist begins to discover that his stunted growth in the relationship side of his life was more down to his own mother and not necessarily due to his arrested development. Rose Gordon scolded and shamed Charlie whenever he showed any signs of biological sexual development during his infancy. If he became aroused or hinted of any signs of lust toward members of the opposite gender, Rose would scold and belittle him for his thoughts; conditioning him to believe that he was wrong in having such thoughts.
It is also at this point in which we start to see how the "other Charlie" (or should I say the more authentic side to Charlies' personality) deals with his hostility toward Alice, by pushing himself into an intimate relationship with a woman named Fay Lillman.
Fay is something of a wild card of a character. She has little (or next to no) shame in exposing her body to complete strangers, loves to dance into the early hours of the morning and possesses little interest in intellectual stimulation. She almost feels like a mirror image of the Charlie who has grown and developed throughout the duration of this story. It's almost as if the more authentic Charlie from before the operation is trying to fight these newly discovered sexual lusts by forcing the post-op Charlie to immerse himself emotionally with a woman who does not exist within the same mind-set as he.
The love triangle can be at times slightly ambiguous; making it difficult for the reader to comprehend what Charlie is doing to himself during these moments. Why is per-opperation Charlie so hostile toward Alice, yet so welcoming to Fay? Despite Fay's lack of passion for Charlies' line of work, she's still light years apart from the Charlie we understand at the start of this story. But amongst all the questions as to why pre-Charlie is battling against post-Charlies' happiness, it is possible to perceive the actions that both versions of Charlie are taking as a simultaneous choice. Charlie has not had the chance to blossom and develop sexually like most humans do. At 32 years of age, he has not even been able to learn from experiences which many encounter during their adolescent years.
The love triangle which Charlie assembles throughout the duration of this narrative could quite easily be understood as the bi-product of a man who's trying to react to a series of emotions and events which are staggeringly alien to him. He's like a mouse trying to find its way through a maze.
Which brings us on to Algernon himself. Algernon is mostly used as a symbol throughout the book. His presence is mainly there to forshadow the events which will one day take over Charlies' life. Seeing as Algernon's lifespan if dramatically shorter than a humans, plus seeing as the mouse was subjected to the intelligence experiment far sooner than Charlie; all the situations occurring in this helpless rodent will inevitably happen to our protagonist.
Yet Algernon is more than just a foreshadowing of things to come for dear old Charlie. He's also a tool to help give the narrative of this story a center. Despite the changes which take place in Charlie, and despite where he goes, Algernon remains as the unchanging link throughout it all. Charlies' relationship with this pet mouse is the one relationship which remains the same from start to finish (minus one of the earlier report progress logs at the start; which has pre-op Charlie expressing great frustration due to the mouses' staggering intellect). Regardless of what Charlie discovers about his past, who he falls in love with, and whichever direction his IQ travels in, his caring nature toward Algernon never sways. Even after Algernon is dead and Charlies' intellect ceases to be, his last request is for flowers to be placed on Algernon's grave.
Algernon is the unchanging center of this narrative. As a matter of fact, he is a down-sized replica of the narrative itself, which drifts through the mother-narrative; foreshadowing events and granting Charlie one ability that reassures the readers that both post and pre surgery Charlie are of one of the same person; the ability to love and care for something that has no real knowledge as to what's going on around it.
Not many people on this planet will ever know what it feels like to have an IQ of 185. Yet despite this fact, Flowers for Algernon is a story which can connect with readers from all kinds of backgrounds.
We all start off in life a naive children who breeze on through our lives without a care in the world. We don't fully understand the true horrors and struggles that the universe likes to throw up, and most of us sail through our younger years in a blissful state of ignorance. Yet as we grow older, our intellect increases and the sheet of ignorance is lifted from our eyes sooner or later.
At one point or another, we have all felt the same feelings of anger and disappointment which Charlie feels throughout this book. We've all been there. We've all started to connect the dots and realized that everything we thought we knew was nothing more than a lie which concealed the true depths of this reality.
Flowers for Algernon is a story of a man who was allowed to keep his childhood for life; only to briefly have a taste of what it feels like on the other side of the intellectual spectrum. Which of the two mental is the superior one is debatable, yet one thing is for certain in this story; human behavior is complex, sticky and often taken for granted by many.
The character of Charlie Gordon was allowed to witness both the internal and external complexities of humanity from both sides of the pond. Whether this was a blessing or a curse remains a mystery. And as one of the messages which lies behind the story makes very much clear, no matter how dig you deep, you will never reach total understanding of any given subject, particularly the intricacies of human behavior.
