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Analyzing Daniel Keyes 'Flowers For Algernon'

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Don’t Change for the Worst As we have come to understand there are different types of smart such as school smarts (math, English etc.) but there is also social smarts. Someone could be amazing in one but not so bright in the other. The book “Flowers for Algernon” by Daniel Keyes is about Charlie Gordon, a 37-year-old man, who has been an outsider his whole life because he did not have “school” smarts. He believes that if he can be in a lab and have a bunch of tests done on him, that he will eventually be smart. He does not even know the outcome of this surgery. The surgery does work for a little while before it starts wearing off and he goes back to his old self. Charlie Gordon should have never had gone through with the surgery because it …show more content…

Charlie was always able to talk to people easily about a topic that everyone could enjoy and when he was at work with his friends he could talk to them, but all of a sudden he was smart and he cannot enjoy a normal conversation. When Charlie is talking about his communication problems he states “I tried to avoid all discussions of intellectual concepts and to keep the conversation on a simple, everyday level, but she just stared at me blankly and asked what I meant about mathematical variance equivalent in Dorbermann s Fifth Concerto [sic], (Keyes 18). Charlie tries to keep his communication to a limit because he finds he can’t have a conversation with bringing up a hard topic. Charlie’s being school smart has taken away his social abilities. He says that Miss Kinn looked at him blankly showing him that this is not a light topic. He finds the need to avoid conversations after this encounter. In life, being able to have a normal conversation is a necessity because everywhere you go there will be people that you might need to talk to. Doing the surgery has made it impossible for Charlie to talk with someone proving he should not have had the …show more content…

Charlie was a happy person. He loved his job and his friends, so I think that it is safe to say he loves his life. After the surgery, he had no one to talk to or anything to do all day. He admits to himself that he can “feel the darkness closing in. It’s hard to throw off thoughts of suicide (Keyes 23). In this quote he states that he can “feel the darkness closing in” and he can not seem to shake off the idea of killing himself. This shows that he is in a super depressing place and he wants it to end. He says that he can physically feel the bad taking over his body. Charlie would not have been experiencing these terrible feelings if he had not done the surgery. If Charlie had known how much pain this surgery would have given him and all for nothing, then he would not have done it. The fact that this surgery left Charlie depressed and distraught proves that he was better off

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