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Flowers For Alggernon In Flowers For Algernon

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Was Charlie better off before or after the operation?
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes is about Charlie Gordon, a mentally disabled 37 year old that is offered a one in a lifetime chance of being intelligent by having an operation. Although the operation works and he becomes very intelligent, he slowly loses his intelligence later on. Although Charlie has lost his I.Q which is his intelligence, he has still kept his E.Q which is his emotional intelligence. Charlie also has the involvement of going through all of that which transforms him as a person and he does not let anyone take advantage of him anymore. This shows that Charlie is still better off after the operation than before.
To begin, Charlie is still better off after the surgery because he now has E.Q, or emotional intelligence unlike he did before he got the operation. Before the operation, Charlie did not understand the emotions of people. For instance, the entry on April 15 (Keyes 291) tells us that when Charlie and Ms. Kinnian were talking, Ms. Kinnian got something in her eye and had to go into the ladies room, but we knew that she was actually crying, an example of dramatic irony. This displays that before the operation, Charlie does not know the emotional standpoint of people, but after the operation Charlie does. To demonstrate, after Charlie had the operation but lost his intelligence, Charlie went into Ms. Kinnians class acting like he used to before the operation. Then, he said, “She startid to cry

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