Flowers for Algernon

Flowers for Algernon is beautifully written yet simply written. A good book communicates complex ideas with complexity; a great book can communicate complex ideas with a straightforward plot and simple prose. Keyes achieves this in spades, blending themes from Frankenstein with elements of Freud and Dostoevsky. It is a book about consciousness, a book about latent trauma in the unconscious, an incisive rebuttal to those who dare violate the rules of the universe. It is a story of misery and of gratitude.  

Before going on, readers who haven’t read this book should be aware that continuing onward does contain spoilers. However, it is also not a substitute for reading this masterpiece.

Charlie, the 32-year-old protagonist with an IQ of 68, struggles with daily tasks that most of us do on autopilot. For instance, he struggles to express his thoughts coherently, has trouble with basic spelling and grammar, and cannot meaningfully retain knowledge. Even basic coordination is a challenge for him. It is therefore unsurprising when Charlie tells us he wants to be smarter. Not uber smart—just smart enough to talk shop with his coworkers, discuss politics and current currents. Just smart enough to fit in.

Seeking improvement, Charlie enrolls in literacy classes at Beekman College Center, designed for adults with learning disabilities. One day, two researchers, Dr. Strauss and Professor Nemur survey students, looking for the first human subject in an experimental surgery to increase intelligence. Charlie is selected for his upbeat attitude and his motivation. Should everything go to plan, he may become a genius for the rest of his life. 

The researchers outline the risks: The effects may only be temporary. Or in the worst case he may end up less intelligent than before. The emotional trauma following the procedure may be distressing. However, they assure Charlie, you will be advancing science. You could change the lives of millions just like you. While not fully aware of what he is getting into, he is vaguely aware that his current level of intelligence is the barrier preventing deeper relationships, so he excitedly accepts.

As luck would have it, the procedure appears to be a resounding success. In just a matter of weeks Charlie is noticeably different. That once dull look in his eyes now replaced with a penetrating stare. He carries himself with confidence. He begins to speak not just coherently but eloquently. By merely observing Oliver work the mixer, he masters it in short order to the shock of his coworkers. Before, he could hardly be trusted to complete a delivery. Now, in his free time, he plows through the classics, masters graduate level mathematics, and reads and writes in seven languages.

All the while, Charlie keeps the same job at the same bakery he worked for 15 years. Perhaps it’s odd for a budding genius to continue mopping floors and scrubbing toilets. He has far outgrown it but continues his janitorial duties out of habit. Feelings of safety and familiarity tug at him to stay. His coworkers', however, sense something about Charlie has changed deeply—something strange and ineffable.  Naturally, they begin to avoid him. And at this point in the book Charlie starts to resent them. 

Upon revisiting old memories under the light of his newfound intelligence, he discovers Joe and Frank—who only weeks ago he so desperately wanted to connect with—actually mistreated him. Indeed, at times the treatment was nothing short of cruel. He recalls a party where he was made to dance as Joe tripped him repeatedly to a crowd of guffawing onlookers, that he was tricked into eating a wax apple, that they left him alone in the dead of night (only to be brought home by a policeman hours later). Before the procedure, he never thought anything of it—that’s just how friends treat friends. Now fully aware of past mistreatment, he feels humiliated and wronged.

At this point in the book, I was so wrapped up in Charlie’s unraveling trauma that I agreed with him. These people were no friends! His coworkers must be avoiding him because he is smart now, smarter than them! They only liked being around him when they could feel superior to him, or when they could use him as an object to toy with. Now, Charlie tells us, they avoid him out of resentment, out of jealousy, and out of shame.

To an extent this is all true. But most of all his coworkers fear the new Charlie. While all are unaware of his operation, at an intuitive level, they know it is unnatural for a 32 year old man to undergo such rapid cognitive development. His coworker Fanny, sensing that something is off, warns him that, “It was evil when Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge. It was evil when they saw they was naked, and learned about lust and shame. And they was driven out of Paradise and the gates was closed to them.”

It’s easy for the reader, when confronting this line, to write of Fanny as yet another jealous bumpkin at the bakery. How uneducated she sounds with her improper tenses! But unlike Joe and Frank, Fanny has always been kind to Charlie. Upon revisiting this passage with a clearer mind, it becomes obvious she knows Charlie somehow violated the rules of the universe. Indeed, she even predicts Charlie’s future just as Adam and Eve were banished from Eden. 

While Charlie tells us he enrolled in the experiment to make friends, thus far intelligence has only driven away the friends he had. As the book unfolds, we learn more and more about Charlie's mother. How she so desperately wanted him to be like other kids, how she vehemently denies that he is different. Sensing his delayed development, she prays around the clock that her son will turn out normal. Of course this doesn’t happen. But instead of accepting Charlie she doubles down on denial. If he couldn’t learn it wasn’t because he is incapable but that he is lazy. So she beat him. She beat him if he didn’t grasp social norms. She beat him if he couldn’t keep up in class. She shrieked at him if he soiled his pants out of fear, or if he ran to her for comfort. Rose even paid a quack doctor to blast him with EMFs weekly to stimulate his brain. 

The denial finally ended when Rose gave birth to another child, her daughter Norma, who she deemed “normal.” Following Norma’s birth Charlie became the family pariah. Rose villainized Charlie. She began to attribute any fault in her own life or in Norma’s life to Charlie. She felt his condition made him too dangerous to be around his little sister, concluding that Charlie must be sent away. Norma was a normal girl and needed a normal childhood, and normal girls don’t have an autistic brother. As Charlie processes this childhood trauma, we are led to believe that, perhaps unconsciously, he actually wanted to be smart not for want of friends but for of his mother’s love and approval. But it was approval he never got.

When Fanny quotes Genesis, she is taking the opposite stance to Rose. At the bakery, Charlie is accepted as he is. Perhaps at times his coworkers weren't the kindest but he was always included. Like Adam and Eve, his innate worth is divinely ascribed. Intelligence is not a prerequisite for value. And as Charlie's intelligence begins to deteriorate, his coworkers' true acceptance of him becomes even more evident. Joe and Frank stand up for him when a new employee bullies a confused and scared Charlie. In fact, they decide to fire the guy to ensure a comfortable work environment for their friend. 

Rose, on the other hand, could never accept and love Charlie with his differences. Her love was entirely contingent on normalcy. She didn’t love him because he was her son, she only loved the idea of a brilliant son whose excellence could be boasted about. 

Rose falls victim to the classic Dostoyevskian trap. That is, if she could just change this one thing in life, from then on everything would be perfect. If her son could just be smart, just be like all the other boys and girls, then all the problems in her life would evaporate. If this were true, Rose’s life should be spectacular. But things are far from it. 

When he returns to his childhood street to meet his mother for the first time in 15 years, he notes that his childhood home is decrepit. The whole block looks much worse than he remembers. Norma, who supposedly needed to be protected from Charlie, didn’t amount to much and still lives at home. Rose’s marriage dissolved and she never found another lover. And she is more neurotic than before, still obsessing over how ghosts of the past perceive her and her family, still asking God why he cursed her son. Misery, however, cannot be unwound in a singular event.

Paralleling his mother’s arc, intelligence and fame didn’t magically solve any of Charlies’s problems. In fact, by all metrics his suffering also increased after the operation. He is forced to unpack years and years of childhood trauma in just a few months, is bombarded by constant nightmares and hallucinations, and comes to realize that life is more lonely as a supergenius than as a moron. He is completely alone. And to top it off, he has to come to grips with his death. 

In spite of the emotional turmoil and the realization of his impending cognitive decline, Charlie still feels gratitude. He feels grateful for a second chance, even grateful for the angst and torment. And this is a lesson Rose could never grasp. Of course, having a child like Charlie is difficult, and it is hard not to empathize with her at times. Your life as a parent may be three times as hard as others, your child may not fit in at school. He may require around the clock care. Still, it is your child and it is your God given duty to protect him. He deserves love not because of something he could be but because of who he is. 

Rose refused to accept that, and that is largely how her character arc ends. True, in a moment of lucidity, she forgives Charlie, exclaiming, “My prayers—all these years I thought He didn't hear me, but He was listening all the time, just waiting His own good time to do His will.” Her son returned home not average nor smart but as a genius! A boy she could finally boast to the neighbors about. Indeed, Charlie even hands his mom a publication. A new scientific truth with the family’s surname on it! 

For a brief moment, Rose accepts her son. But had he shown up as the same Charlie before March 11, before that fateful operation, in all likelihood she would have shunned him again. When senility overtakes her, once again, that latent resentment bubbles to the surface, and she threatens to kill him for the second time in his life. Ironically, in her senile state Rose herself resembles the child she once rejected.

As the novel reaches its conclusion, it becomes clear that, truly, no one wins in Flowers for Algernon. Charlie’s great discovery, his magnum opus, the Algernon-Gordon Effect, proves his operation is fundamentally flawed. The increase to his intelligence is merely a temporary burst and cognitive decline is imminent.

The old Charlie was eking out a respectable existence, albeit with limitations. However, that man was sacrificed in the name of science and progress. Realizing this, Charlie apologizes to his old self, “It’s your body and your brain—and your life, even though you weren’t able to make much use of it. I don’t have the right to take it away from you. Nobody does. Who’s to say that my light is better than your darkness?” Charlie’s ultimate fate is a tragedy, losing more than he gained. He ends up more handicapped. Unable to work at the bakery, he loses the job he held for 15 years; he loses the friends that he had made along the way. Most unfairly of all, he loses his independence, and the book ends with him checking into an assisted living facility.

That is the danger of playing God. The danger of changing a person, an individual, into an object of ideation. This is not to put the blame on dear Charlie. It is fair to say that when he accepted the operation he did not have the capacity to grasp the implications in its entirety. The blame rests with his Mother for relentlessly pressuring him to fit into a narrow idea of normalcy, and on Professor Nemur and Dr. Strauss for playing dice with the natural order.