Flowers For Algernon Literary Analysis

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Pages: 6

The Cost of Bad Decisions “The measure of intelligence is the ability to change,”- Albert Einstein. In Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes, Dr. Strauss, Dr. Nemur, and Miss Kinnian were all trying to help
Charlie Gordon (a mental 37-year-old) prepare for an operation. The purpose of this surgery was to help Charlie become smarter since he was a grown man with an IQ of 68. Charlie’s dream has always been to be able to read and write, but he never knew how much it would cost him
(Charlie was never warned of the risks of the surgery but he agreed just because it was his main goal in life). In other words, the doctors made an unwise choice in choosing Charlie as their study subject because it increased Charlie’s disbelief in himself and made
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Charlie figured out that he was going to die when he said,“Everyone identifies me with Algernon. In a way we are the first of our kind”(Keyes 203). Algernon was a lab mouse who took the same operation before Charlie, and so everything that happened to Algernon was going to happen to Charlie. Therefore, when Algernon started acting weird and later to dying, the readers (and Charlie) were able to say that Charlie would also go back to his normal stage and later to die. Yet, others might still believe that the operation was a good idea and just say that he was going to die anyway like all humans. However, he should have known all the risks because human life is more essential than science moving forward. “Evidence suggests that at least some human study subjects would like to know if a study involves risk of death, even if it is very small”(Berger 31). Since Charlie was willing to help science, he should have at least been notified of all the possible risks. Another example is that Charlie had a plan for what to do next, but his life was cut short, “That's why 1m going away from New York for good. I want to do nothing like that again. don't want Miss Kinnian to feel sorry for me. Evry body feels sorry at the factory and I don't want that either so 1m going someplace where nobody knows that Charlie Gordon was once a genius and now he can't even read a book or write good”(Keyes 209). Charlie accidentally walked into Miss. Kinnian’s class and when she saw him, she ran out in tears. When Charlie noticed that he made that mistake, he decided to move away so that no one feels sorry for him and so he can just start over but of course he would not have that much