Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes (Essay Sample)

Flowers for Algernon
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Flowers for Algernon
The author has extensively used Algernon and Algernon’s experience as a way of increasing the reader’s understanding and sympathy for Charlie. Flowers for Algernon is essentially the narrative that traces the emotional and mental development of a retarded individual, Charlie Gordon, the protagonist in the story, who actually becomes the first person to be the test subject for a grand brain experiment. In the story, Charlie Gordon lives through ironic, sad, and comic experiences as he comes out from mental darkness, through the different stages of understanding and perceiving levels of knowledge, into the light of intricate consciousness of the world, of himself, and of people.
At the laboratory from where Charlie was to undergo an operation performed by Professor Nemur and Dr. Strauss to raise his intelligence to that of an intellectual superman, he ran mazes against a super-smart white mouse known as Algernon under the supervision of Burt Selden. Algernon is the very first creature to have kept his artificially increased IQ through Strauss and Nemur’s experiment. The doctors asked Charlie Gordon to compete with Algernon in a maze-solving competition. The mouse had already undergone the experimental surgery and Charlie was scheduled to undergo the same surgery soon. In total, there were 11 maze-solving competitions and Algernon defeated Charlie in all of them. No matter what Charlie did, when they did the mazes in the beginning, Algernon always beat him and he became very irritated. This experience of Algernon enables the reader to understand that after he undergoes the operation, Charlie would also be highly intelligent.
Charlie Gordon identifies with Algernon, particularly when it becomes clear that the experiment is flawed and mental regression is bound to happen. Algernon becomes forgetful, erratic, and listless. As Keyes (1975) stated, Algernon has become less cooperative; he no longer wants to run the maze, and his general motivation has diminished. This is an instance of foreshadowing the author used in creating mood given that because Charlie underwent similar surgical operation as Algernon, similar effects will happen to him thus it foreshadows that Charlie would also begin losing his intelligence. This creates sympathy for Charlie since the reader knows that everything that Charlie did in order to become smarter would go away and his intelligence will revert back to how he was pre-operation.
In the end, Algernon dies and Charlie Gordon buries him under a bunch of wildflowers (Keyes, 1975). At this moment, Charlie is not just miserable and dejected about the death of the mo...