Flowers for Algernon Essay

Flowers for Algernon Essay

In the short story, “Flowers for Algernon,” by Daniel Keyes, Charlie changes emotionally and intellectually, showing us the importance of hope and determination. Charlie’s emotions change when the doctors told him that they might use him for the operation. His emotions also change while he realizes that people do not talk to him, or like him as much when he is super smart. Charlie’s emotions also change at the end, when he is dumb again, and becomes happier. Charlie’s intelligence increases. Before the operation, he does not know that they are only using him because he has a low I.Q. of 68. Charlie grows intellectually after the operation and he just kept on getting smarter and smarter. In the end, Charlies intellectual attitude drops back to where it was at the beginning of the story. A life lesson we can learn from Charlie's emotional and intellectual changes is that we need to have hope and determination, because there is almost always a possibility that a wish or dream can come true.

In the beginning of the story, Charlie is very excited to be used for the operation as he says, “Their going to use me! Im so exited I can hardly write” (p. 351). Charlie is very excited to be used in the operation because he always wanted to be smart. He always felt dumb. Now that he had the chance to be smart, he was very excited to reach his goal. Charlie was waiting for an opportunity like this his whole life. When the doctors say that they could give him a golden opportunity, he was obviously going to take it. Though Charlie should have been more careful making this decision, because there were consequences. We learn from this that we should always be happy and appreciate opportunities thrown our way.

Charlie is blinded by this opportunity and does not carefully think about this decision. All he wanted was to be smart, “Dr. Strauss says I shud rite down what I think and evrey thing that happins to me from now on. I dont know why but he says its importint so they will see if they will use me” (p. 347). Charlie didn’t realize that the scientists wanted to see how the operation would work on someone that was dumb. After all, Charlie didn’t care about anything but being smart. This negatively affected him because others who were close to him thought that he was not as fun as a very smart person. This shows us that we have to be aware of our environment, and see how we can change it for good by treating everyone respectfully.

After the operation, Charlie becomes a genius, but it came with a price. Charlie thinks to himself, “People don’t talk to me much anymore or kid around the way they used to. It makes the job kind of lonely” (p. 363). Charlie realizes that people don’t like him as much. At this point of the story, Charlie has regrets. Although Charlie was very happy to be smart, his emotions changed and memories took over.