Flowers for Algernon

Flowers for Algernon is a science fiction story written by Daniel Keyes. It was originally published as a novelette in the April 1959 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, winning a Hugo award for Best Short Fiction in 1960, and it was later extended into a full-length novel by the same name (ISBN 0553274503), which won the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1966. It has also been filmed three times: first, as Charly in 1968, starring Cliff Robertson; second, under its own title, dramatized for BBC Radio 4 with Tom Courtenay as Charlie; and finally, in 2000, it was made into a TV movie starring Matthew Modine. It was also made into a musical starring Michael Crawford. The book is often found on required reading lists in North American public schools and many major universities throughout the world.

Plot details

In Flowers for Algernon the story centers around Charlie Gordon, a 32-year-old mentally challenged janitor, who volunteers to take part in an experimental intelligence-enhancing treatment. His progress parallels that of Algernon, a laboratory mouse who has also been "enhanced" at an earlier date. The story is told from Charlie's point of view and written as a journal, or progris riport as he initially terms it, which he was asked to keep as part of the experiment. Succeeding entries trace Charlie's ever-increasing comprehension and intelligence in the aftermath of the treatment, as he passes through "normality", and then reaches super-genius level. He discovers both the advantages of intelligence and awareness (his ability to form a relationship with the psychologist involved in the project, Alice) and disadvantages (the people he thought were his friends turn out to have only viewed him as 'entertainment' and resent his abilities that come to surpass their own). Yet, all seems to be proceeding according to plan, until Algernon's enhanced intelligence begins to fade rapidly. As Charlie himself proves theoretically, the neural enhancement cannot be sustained, and he too is doomed to revert to his original mental state and ultimately end up dead as a result of the treatment. He records his struggles involving his own advanced scientific research to find a way to stop the decay until he realizes the futility of it all. The title's mention of flowers is a reference to Charlie's last request that "please if you get a chanse put some flowrs on Algernons grave in the bak yard...".

Story analysis and some main points

The story is extremely effective because it is told from Charlie's point of view, and as Charlie's mental state shifts, it is reflected in his writings. He becomes depressed, for example, when he poignantly realizes he can no longer understand his own proof that his cognition will decay away.

Various allegorical points are made throughout the book that allude to various forms of discrimination and acceptance and concepts that allude to ignorance being a form of bliss. Intelligence turns out to be a double-edged sword for Charlie and he cannot help but realize that everything he previously believed was not as it seemed. The condescending attitudes of his 'friends' and co-workers register once he gains awareness. He discovers that his initial adolescent crush for Alice actually has the potential to be something more. He learns of the insecurities of other scientists when they realize that their experiment has turned him into someone whose IQ surpasses their own. The novel touches upon aspects of the human condition that uses the trappings of a science fiction premise to relate various notions of consciousness and awareness that people take for granted.

Surprising controversy

In January 1970, the school board of Cranbrook, British Columbia, Canada, banned the novel-length expansion of Flowers from the local grade-nine curriculum and the school library, after a parent complained that it was "filthy and immoral". The president of the BC Teachers' Federation criticized the action. Flowers was part of the BC Department of Education list of approved books for grade nine and was recommended by the BC Secondary Association of Teachers of English. A month later, the board reconsidered and returned the book to the library; they did not, however, lift its ban from the curriculum. [Mind War: Book Censorship in English Canada, p. 37; Not in Our Schools! p. 9] It should be noted that whereas the full novel does contain material about the character's personal life (that is, flashbacks of pubertic experiences that may be highly objectionable to many people), the original short story is squeaky clean in this regard.

Cultural references

The 1986 Stephen King short story "The End of the Whole Mess" is written in a similar first-person narrative style. In the story, the narrator also regresses to a mentally retarded state due to Alzheimers and cannot understand his previous writings.

In 2004, an episode of the television series Century City had a plot line in which a formerly retarded man sues to keep the implant which had given him superior intelligence. It was discovered that the implants were causing their recipients to die.

Japanese rock singer Kyosuke Himuro's solo debut album is named Flowers for Algernon.

An episode of The Simpsons, entitled "HOMЯ", is apparently a loose parody of Flowers for Algernon; Homer is given an operation to remove a crayon from his brain, resulting in increased intelligence. He proceeds to lose his friends, and consequently requests that the crayon be re-inserted. Not unlike Charlie, he cannot understand a note he wrote to Lisa while intelligent. Indeed, even the misspelling of the main character's name alludes to the title "Charly."

In an episode of the comic strip Tom the Dancing Bug titled "Flowers for Trinitron", the temporary loss of cable television service causes a sedentary young man to blossom into a creative genius, until his TV starts working again.

An episode of Spongebob Squarepants, Patrick SmartPants, revolved around Patrick's being hit on his head after falling off a cliff and its replacement with another resulting in his becoming extremely intelligent but going back to normal because of losing his relationship with Spongebob.

A list of the numerous adaptations of the story can be found here [1]

In a slightly different interpretation of "Cultural references", the book itself includes a passage of Plato's The Republic. Quite applicable for the novel, it talks of how the mind's eye is, like its biological counterpart, cannot see when used to darkness and then put into light. Neither can it see in the opposite situation. It is similar to Plato's allegory of the cave.

In the PC game "World of Warcraft," in the Undercity there is a non-playable character named Algernon holding flowers in front of the Alchemy trainer.

In the 1999, 26 episode anime "Betterman[2]",flowers known as "animus flowers" spread a deadly virus named Algernon which causes people to become barbaric. This is almost representative people regressing to previous forms of civilization, a larger scale representation of Charlie's regression.

A similar storyline can be found in the film "At First Sight (1999)," based on a story by Oliver Sacks, about a blind man who regains his sight but learns that he will eventually lose it again.

Trivia

Taglines

• Of mice and men.

External links

• Charly at IMDb
• Flowers for Algernon at IMDb