Flowers For Algernon

“I tolld her how can you get that from cards that sombody spilld ink on and fotos of pepul you dont even no. She lookd angrey and took the picturs away. I dont care.”

During his initial encounters with the research lab team at Beekman, Charlie is baffled by the assortment of psychological tests. Charlie’s response to the Rorschach test, designed to test what “images” one sees in an array of random ink blots, shows his struggles to think in abstract terms. His reaction also shows that he tends to see things in overly literal terms. Charlie’s development over the novel emphasizes that complex functions, like imagination, abstract thinking, and an understanding of emotions, lag behind intellectual learning.

“And she said mabey they got no rite to make me smart because if god wantid me to be smart he would have made me born that way.” 

In the beginning of the novel, Charlie accepts without question that the experimental procedure is a good thing; the lab team and Alice generally say as much. Charlie initially does not have the knowledge that the team had. The first person to openly question the ethics of the procedure is a nurse who thinks the experiment might be morally wrong on religious grounds. The nurse’s remark, though made in passing, points to a key question raised in the novel: given the ability to alter an intellectual disability, should one?

“They are all good friends to me.”

Charlie’s naïveté creates dramatic irony: The reader knows that his coworkers are treating him badly, but Charlie is unaware. As described in the early progress reports, he believes that his coworkers at the bakery are his friends. It is true that they care for Charlie on some level, but it is also true that Joe, Frank, and Gimpy play tricks on Charlie and ridicule him. The way they treat him emphasizes the deplorability of mistreating a person with an intellectual disability.

“The more intelligent you become, the more problems you’ll have, Charlie. Your intellectual growth is going to outstrip your emotional growth.”

Dr. Strauss explains a central conflict in the novel: While Charlie’s intellectual growth after the experimental procedure is exponential, he struggles to understand and deal with emotions. Strauss, Alice and others are aware of this conflict quite early, and to their credit, they share their insights with Charlie. However, none of them realize how devastating the conflict will become.

“I never thought about it before, but that was a nice thing for him to do.”

As Charlie has increasingly detailed memories and advances intellectually, he comes to understand more about his past. He recalls when Gimpy tried to teach him to make rolls by rewarding him with a shiny trinket; when Charlie failed, Gimpy gave it to him anyway. Charlie now sees that Gimpy’s gift was a kind act. Looking back, he sees Gimpy in more nuanced ways: He realizes that Gimpy and his other coworkers were ridiculing him on one hand, but that Gimpy was also showing care for Charlie. Charlie’s awareness is a sign of his slowly developing social-emotional learning. 

“She has pigeon-soft brown eyes and feathery brown hair down to the hollow of her neck.” 

Alice is important to Charlie, one of the few connections between his past and present. One of the first signs of Charlie’s rapid intellectual growth is evident in this description. Charlie uses figurative language for the first time. The ability to make non-literal comparisons—comparing her eyes to a pigeon’s, for instance—shows that Charlie has begun to think more abstractly, a major intellectual development.

“What’s right? Ironic that all my intelligence doesn’t help me solve a problem like this.”

Charlie learns that Gimpy has been stealing money from the bakery. He is torn between wanting to tell the truth and not wanting to get a friend in trouble—a classic moral dilemma. He is shocked that this problem cannot simply be solved rationally. The conflict emphasizes that his social-emotional development has not kept pace with his intellectual gains. 

“They would always find excuses to slip away, afraid to reveal the narrowness of their knowledge.”

Not long after Charlie begins to make great strides intellectually, he shifts to thinking about others around him with arrogance. Having mastered areas as diverse as mathematics, foreign languages, and physics, Charlie belittles even the intelligent members of the Beekman lab community for only being experts in isolated fields of knowledge. Charlie’s arrogance is mitigated somewhat by the realization that part of his frustration stems from confusion: Prior to his intellectual growth, he had not realized that the people he looked up to had limits. Now, he is unsure of who or what he can rely on.

“I had no way of knowing what she expected of me. This was far from the clear lines of problem-solving and the systematic acquisition of knowledge.”

When Alice and Charlie attempt a romantic relationship, he is excited at first, but then frustrated because the relationship does not go smoothly. He still struggles to understand emotional responses. At an outdoor concert in Central Park, he is confused when Alice suggests he just sit back and enjoy the music like a wave sweeping over him. Even the language Charlie uses (“problem-solving,” “systematic acquisition of knowledge”) sounds intellectual and technical, in contrast to the emotional, figurative way that Alice speaks of music. 

“I began to see that by my astonishing growth I had made them shrink and emphasized their inadequacies. I had betrayed them, and they hated me for it.”

When Charlie is fired from the bakery he is deeply unsettled; his work and companions at the bakery had been one of the few constants in his life. However, his firing is also a moment of growth. He becomes more self-reflective and self-aware, realizing that the arrogance that emerged along with his intellectual growth impacted the people around him. In this moment, Charlie begins to understand that other people have needs and shortcomings, and that much of human relationships is anticipating and accommodating these needs.

“I’m like an animal who’s been locked out of his nice, safe cage.”

Charlie is distraught when he is fired from Mr. Donner’s bakery and Alice attempts to console him. She explains that it is natural he would feel upset after being separated from the bakery, which had been a stable part of his life. Charlie attempts to express his fears. In comparing himself to an “animal” kept out of his “cage,” Charlie implicitly draws a connection between himself and Algernon; both are feeling the effects of the experimental procedure, isolating them from what is familiar and secure.

“Ironic to find myself on the other side of the intellectual fence.” 

Along with his rapid intellectual gains, Charlie becomes more arrogant and frustrated with the shortcomings of others. Even the people he had previously considered most intelligent—such as Dr. Strauss—now seem limited. When Strauss asks Charlie to simplify his comments so that others can understand, Charlie sees the irony: When most affected by his intellectual disability, others failed to understand him—yet now that he has become highly expressive, others still cannot understand him. This emphasizes how Charlie continues to feel isolated and alone even after the procedures.

“No, you’re not growing duller every day! You’re not losing your intelligence! […] It’s Charlie exploding forward so quickly that it makes it appear as if you’re slipping backwards.”

Alice tells Charlie that she has to reassure herself of her own intelligence—she’s not growing less bright, Charlie is just growing smarter. She is also devastated by Charlie’s arrogant treatment of others. As his teacher, she has played a vital role in Charlie’s education, both before and after the experimental procedure. Though she had believed in him even when he struggled with his intellectual disability, she now feels that he belittles her. She complains of his inability to sense how his intelligence affects other people. She realizes that Charlie’s stunted emotional development may be to blame but cannot help but feel hurt.

“Now I can see where I got the unusual motivation for becoming smart that so amazed everyone at first.”

On the flight to the conference in Chicago, Charlie has a revelation. He recalls his parents taking him as a child to a specialist who falsely claimed to be able to “cure” his intellectual disability. He realizes that he went willingly along with that false treatment, just as he went along with the Beekman experiment, largely because he wanted to please his highly critical mother. Though the revelation cannot stop Charlie’s impending intellectual decline, it does emphasize a main theme of Flowers for Algernon: No matter how great or reduced the powers of one’s intellect may be, emotions are a fundamental force in life. They define humans as much as the cerebral.

“He makes the same mistake as the others when they look at a feeble-minded person and laugh because they don’t understand there are human feelings involved. He doesn’t realize that I was a person before I came here.”

Charlie’s revelation on the flight to Chicago changes the way he thinks of the people around him, particularly those at the Beekman lab. He criticizes how Professor Nemur speaks about how Charlie was prior to the experimental procedure. As Charlie’s recollections of his past have grown and sharpened, he has come to see the common thread of humanity that winds through his past and present. For this reason, he cannot abide how Nemur, like those who ridicule people with intellectual disabilities, fails to see his human dignity.

“But still it’s frightening to realize that my fate is in the hands of men who are not the giants I once thought them to be, men who don’t know all the answers.”

At an informal discussion during the Chicago conference, Charlie comments on Strauss’s and Nemur’s limited knowledge. Burt says that Charlie lacks tolerance and fails to see the pressure that Nemur in particular is under to prove that the experiment is a success. Charlie acknowledges that Burt is right. However, Charlie’s world is still upturned by the realization that even the most intelligent people he knows are imperfect.

“He’s like all the other children. He’s a good boy.”

Charlie is brought news of his family after fleeing with Algernon from the Chicago conference. The newspaper articles he reads trigger deeper memories of his childhood. He continues to recall his mother as being hypercritical and rejecting. He also sees her complexity and remembers her praising him for being a “good boy.” This more nuanced perception of his mother foreshadows how he will come to terms with her in the final portion of Flowers for Algernon.

“Seeing myself in the front mirror looking into the back mirror, as he held it for me, it tilted for an instant into the one angle that produced the illusion of depth; endless corridors of myself… looking at myself… looking at myself… looking at myself… looking…”

Charlie visits his father Matt’s barbershop, though he does not reveal his identity. The experience is deeply unsettling for Charlie, who realizes he is not ready to face his past so directly after all. Staring into the barbershop mirror next to his father, Charlie literally faces himself, his past, and his present. His gaze is also symbolic: Charlie sees a reflection-within-a-reflection that represents what feels like the uncertainty of his own identity.

“It’ll take the starch out of those straight lines. That’s what’s bugging you. Everything is too neat and straight and you’re all boxed in. Like Algernon in his sculpture there.”

Charlie’s acquaintance with Fay Lillman gives him a new perspective. Her carefree, sensual presence forms a stark contrast with Charlie’s highly intellectual and emotionally stunted life. Fay shows Charlie a way to break away from the confines of his life, symbolized in this comparison between Charlie and the captive mouse Algernon.

“Then, with a violent effort of the will, I was back on the couch with her, aware of her body and my own urgency and potency, and I saw the face against the window, hungrily watching.”

For much of Flowers for Algernon, Charlie is emotionally incapable of handling sexual feelings for Alice, who he loves. He even struggles to connect with Fay, who does not inspire the same connection. In these lines, Charlie describes how it takes “a violent effort of the will” to sleep with Fay. He describes the act with references to violence, urgency, and potency instead of love, pleasure, and affection. Charlie is still plagued by hallucinations of his younger self, the face watching him from the window.

“It’s foolish and sentimental, but late last night I buried him in the back yard. I wept as I put a bunch of wild flowers on the grave.”

There is a fundamental connection between Charlie and Algernon: As the sole subjects of the experiment, there is no one else like them in the world. Charlie’s “foolish and sentimental” act of placing flowers on the grave is justified. Through this act, Charlie says goodbye to himself, as Algernon’s decline is a sign of his own impending decline.

“Why kid myself? If I had still been the old, feeble-minded, dependent Charlie, she wouldn’t have spoken to me the same way. So what right did I have to it now? My mask would soon be ripped away.”

When Charlie meets with his mother Rose and sister Norma, he is taken aback. He had expected to impress Rose with his intelligence and find himself comforted and welcomed. Instead, he finds himself comforting Norma and accepting his mother, even when she nearly attacks him. At the same time, he realizes that Norma’s warmth toward him is based on his shift away from his “feeble-minded” past. Charlie recognizes this while still extending kindness. This shows that as he faces his impending intellectual decline, he has gained the tolerance that Burt suggested he lacked.

“On the verge of blending with the universe I hear the whispers around the ridges of consciousness. And that ever-so-slight tug holds me to the finite and mortal world below.”

In Progress Report 17, Charlie is in a therapy session with Strauss when he has a sudden, powerful sense of being outside himself. In that moment, the novel takes on a tone not previously used, one that stresses a mystical experience (“whispers” of consciousness and “blending with the universe”). The shift in tone emphasizes that Charlie’s journey is nearing its end, while stressing that there is still a continuity (an “ever-so-slight tug”) connecting him to his past.