Loretta Ho 08S304 Progress Report 1

Flowers of Algernon dwells into the concepts of both science and life. In this book, Keyes takes a daring attempt to portray humans playing god and tweaking the human mind, of scientists and their follies and humans with their ingrained emotions (whether genius or not). Human morals are tested; should one tweak with god-given intelligence? Would it be a marvel of science or another one of those science experiments that go horribly wrong?

Keyes writes the novel in a first-person view therefore carefully portraying the mind of a retarded. We see the transition of Charlie Gorden from being a retarded man to a super brainiac. From his inability to string a proper sentence to complex sentences. What I see most dominant in the story, is his ability to keep trying, whether with brains or not. To me, trying is what makes things possible, and of course for progress to be achieved. Throughout the whole experiment, Charlie is faced with much more adversity in a short period of time than a normal human being would face in his life time. Fortunately, equipped with the intelligence the brain managed to increase, solving problems and even finding answers to his own questions was easy. Ironically, it was also because of this intelligence, that resulted in more problems arousing. For example, self-esteem, over confidence and impatience.

Reading Flowers for Algernon was like reading a child's diary - ever since he was kid to when he starts growing up, and then to being an adult, only that the reports ended up as what it was at the beginning. Innoncence to learning to impressing to annoyance, and back to innocence once again. Charlie learned how to use punctuations, where to put capital letters to learning many different languages and most incredibly, finding the error in the whole experiment. Algernon was a reflection or model of Charlie, only smaller. In the middle of the story, Charlie, still a genius, saw himself in Algernon. Unfortunately, not the postive side of the experiment but rather the negative, or hard part. Seeing himself deteriorating was torture for him, the torned books all piled up in a corner showed his anger, and that evoked sympathy for him. I couldn't help but teared a little when I reached the end of the book.

Last of all, I'd like to say something about the title of the story - Flowers for Algernon. The book was titled after the rat, instead of the protaganist (Charlie Gorden, himself), different from most books I've read where the book is usually titled after the main character of the story (example, Macbeth). Algernon, though only a rat, was the root of the whole experiment, which I suppose is the most significant value. Charlie had a chance to experience what people would take a lifetime to learn, thanks to Algernon. At the end of the story, "...put some flowrs on Algernons grave in the bak yard." was probably a very very sincere thank you to Algernon from Charlie for all that he'd gained. Hence the title.

I thought the book was rather monotonous, I didn't find any climax of the story, did you? But nonetheless, a book thats different from other kinds of books I've read. It's always the ending that determines what I feel for the book, and I can honestly say, that I did enjoy the book. So yes, I liked the ending. It was sweeeet! (so corny so cheesy hahahahaha!)