Flowers for Algernon, Essay Example

Q: 1 – How has Charlie changed at the end of the novel?

“Gimpy hollers at me all the time when I do something wrong, but he really likes me because he is my friend. Boy if I get smart won’t he be surprised.” (p. 5)

Charlie wrote that down in his report of progress and proved that he wanted to be smart and please everyone. He attempted to share his feelings as a transformed person and went along to work hard and out of time so that he could gain as much as possible. By the time Charlie’s IQ started to grow, his capability to know the cruelty of the world also grew and he got to know how the world around him actually was. With the growth in Charlie’s, his attitude also changed in line with those who were present around him. Charlie firstly lost his job, then his friends, then happiness, and in the last even his will to learn or care. However, contrary to this, Charlie had also learnt and experienced a lot from the experiment conducted over him. He experienced freedom, love, and his ability to write and read. Also, the ability to recall about the happenings with him during all the previous year’s greatly changed him. The experience also took him through what all humans experience while living their lives. Charlie quoted in one of his progress reports:

“Now I understand one of the important reasons for going to college and getting an education is to learn that all the things you’ve believed in all your life aren’t true, and that nothing is what it appears to be.” (p. 71)

Q: 2 – Is he different from the person he is at the beginning of the novel, and if so, how?

The experiment changed Charlie and transformed him from being a caring and hard working person to a confused and lonely person. Upon reaching the end of the novel, Charlie had realized that he was happy that the operation went all along with him easily. He put his progress report into writing and is quoted as follows:

“I’m glad I got a second chance in life like you said to be smart because I learned a lot of things that I never even new were in this world and I am grateful I saw it all even for a little bit. And I am glad I found out all about my family and me. It was like I never had a family till I remembered about them and saw them and now I know I had a family and I was a person just like everyone.” (p. 310)

A dramatically change happened with Charlie in this book. He went from being an ignorant to the worldly affairs to a downright genius. Charlie was that type of person who tried desperately to be smart by working hardly daily but when operation was carried over him, he became overly confident and smart and therefore it lead to his bitterness of being consumed like an experimental genie pig. He started to frighten his buddies and the people who loved him because of his intelligence started to avoid him in a matter of short time. Charlie even began to scare Alice, who he loved, because he had become a different person. She is quoted to have stated:

“Already you’ve gone beyond my intellectual reach. In a few months or even weeks you’ll be a different person. When you mature intellectually, we may not be able to communicate. When you mature emotionally, you may not even want me.” (p. 92-93)

Q: 3 – Do you consider the novel’s ending to be tragic or inspiring?

The novel ended with an inspiration for the readers. This piece of writing opened my eyes and showed me how does an individual with psychological retardation acted, thought, wrote and felt. The writer has put the reader in place of Charlie and he has illustrated expertly what has gone through Charlie in his lifetime. He was thrown in the dirt, teased, hurt at and laughed just because he happened to be different from others. The novel made me believe as if I had started to want to become a nice person by not abusing persons names cease to take my things for granted. While I was reading this novel, I realized that my life is made for a purpose and I should avoid wasting it and try again and again to give my best. The story changed all the aspects of my life.

Flowers for Algernon, was the most emotional and inspiring novel that I ever came to me for reading. The writer makes the reader’s mind wander off.

Q: 4 – “Does the novel Flowers for Algernon make a definitive statement about the role of intelligence in human life, or does it simply explore this idea as an open-ended question?”

If one briefly thinks about it, the answer to this question is not very tricky. I think that the answer should be that Flowers for Algernon has really made a definitive statement about the role played by intelligence in life of human beings because. To prove this further, one needs to have a look at several key points

A person’s mental age is the intellectual level at which he or she is living and utilizing. After reading Flowers for Algernon, it becomes obvious that Charlie should not have behaved the way he did and also because that he thought it was normal for someone who was of his age. Charlie was 32 years old, and he wrote with the ability of a fifth or sixth grader, rather than that of a graduate.

It is can now be said obviously that Flowers for Algernon had made a very definitive statement regarding the role of intelligence played in life of human. It can be proved by the fact that Charlie’s life transformed dramatically.

Works Cited

Keyes, Daniel. Flowers for Algernon. New York: Bantam, 1984. Print.