Flowers For Algernon Essay Summary

Flowers for Algernon, written by Daniel Keyes, is a non-fiction short story that is an emotional roller coaster. Charlie learns the ups and downs of the life of a genius and was happy and carefree in his innocence. Eventually he learns shame and it is the only thing he remembers at the end of the story. All Charlie knew was that he wanted to be smart and this operation could get him his greatest desire in one easy procedure. Before long, the scientists first try this experiment on a mouse to see if it might work. The mouse did improve on how fast he learned. Soon after, Charlie has the operation. He just desperately wants to become smart so he can communicate and live just like everyone else does. Nobody takes into consideration that it could hurt Charlie in the long run. As a result, Charlie’s IQ triples. While Charlie's knowledge grows, his attitude changes along with those around him. Charlie loses his job, friends, and happiness. On the contrary of things, Charlie also experiences and learns a lot from this experiment. He experiences love, freedom, being able to read and write. He also has the ability to be able to remember what has happened to him all of these years. As a result, the mouse died and Charlie went back to the way he was. Charlie went from not knowing what was going on in the world to becoming a genius. In conclusion, I feel Charlie should not have had the operation because he was forced to make an unfair decision and Charlie could not have understood the good and bad sides of the operation. There was nothing to let Charlie understand the huge amount of knowledge he would gain and how it would change his life forever.

Charlie Gordon has an operation that triples his IQ from sixty-eight to 204. At the end of the story Charlie's IQ returns to sixty-eight. This experiment was the worst thing that ever happened to Charlie. Charlie did not have a high enough IQ to make an intelligent decision on his own, the experiment