Progress Report 12

Summary

Professor Nemur is upset with Charlie for not writing any progress reports for two weeks; their relationship is increasingly strained as Charlie feels that Professor Nemur did not consider him a human being before his surgery, but only a lab specimen.

Dr Strauss suggests that Charlie should learn to type since he finds writing too slow to capture his thoughts. Charlie’s relationship with Alice remains platonic. Charlie is now able to reach out for his memories and sees them with an intense clarity.

Charlie remembers a fight with his young sister, when they were children. She had wanted a dog for doing well at school, but did not want to share it with Charlie, who she found boring and dumb. The hysteria and shouting make young Charlie wet his pants again.

He also remembers Norma telling a friend that Charlie was adopted. This rejection still hurts Charlie deeply.

Analysis

Charlie’s understanding of himself is keen and he is able to access his subconscious mind, at will. Charlie’s memories of his childhood are painful and full of rejection—and they have had a lasting impact on his personality, even as a more intelligent man after his surgery.

June 6

Summary

Charlie has his first quarrel with Alice. He decides to visit her at the school for retarded adults and looks fondly at his old classmates; his unannounced visit annoys Alice. He wants to know why she is upset and Alice says that earlier, Charlie had a warmth and kindness about him which is severely lacking now.

Alice tells Charlie that his heightened intelligence makes her feel dull and childish and she has been tormenting herself trying to keep up with his IQ. Alice refuses to come to the Chicago convention with Charlie—where Charlie is to be presented as a specimen.

As Charlie walks home, he realizes that his feelings for Alice changed from worship to love to responsibility and even though he wanted to marry her, they belonged in different worlds with his IQ of 185—as much as they were apart when his IQ was 70. The difference now is only that this time, they both know it.

Analysis

Charlie breaks up with Alice with the realization that he was only clinging on to her for fear of losing a familiar person from his past. There is tremendous sadness in knowing that his heightened intelligence has made him lose his friends and his love—when as a mentally disabled person, he wanted to become smart only to be popular and loved.

June 8

Summary

Charlie roams the city’s streets at night; he meets a lonely woman in the park who shares her life story with him. Her tale becomes sexual and this makes Charlie tense. He kisses her but is not filled with dread as he used to be, with Alice. The woman is pregnant and Charlie tells her she should be ashamed of herself for wanting to sleep with a man, when so heavily pregnant. The woman screams for help which puzzles Charlie and makes him run away. He overhears her lying to people that he tried to rape her and had a gun and a knife on him.

Charlie is able to escape unhurt but is bewildered by his own half-desire to be caught and beaten up; he also remembers his mother, heavily pregnant with his younger sister. Charlie screams a voiceless scream and feels a distant humming in his ears.

Analysis

Charlie has a narrow escape with a deranged woman. Although this is his first sexual experience, it is an unhinged one. Charlie becomes more self-aware in noticing his own desire to be beaten up, to be punished—which he links to his childhood beatings and a constant fear that he always does the wrong thing.