One hundred books to read. #59: Flowers for Algernon

It is a rare book that offers up enough material on a contentious and topical subject, while refraining from passing its own judgement on the matter.

Flowers for Algernon
Daniel Keyes
Gollancz

Charlie Gordon is a mentally disabled adult with an IQ of 68.  When he undergoes a new scientific test to artificially inflate his intelligence, he becomes a genius – but at a high price.

Charlie’s journey is documented in the novel through a series of diary entries (“progress reports”), which chart his rapid change in intelligence through his initially poor spelling and grammar that later becomes perfect English.  This allows us to immerse ourselves in the remarkable and slightly jarring transformation that he undergoes, not only to understand the themes on an intellectual level but also to actually feel them.

This novel must have been written in an era when it was acceptable to label the mentally disabled as “retarded” without meaning to be malicious.  However, the mistreatment that Charlie suffers as a result of his disability is evident, from his mother’s cruelty born of fear, to his co-workers’ derision of him disguised as friendship.  On the outside of society, he is perceived as everybody’s inferior, which subconsciously manifests itself as him being treated with less dignity than would be offered a “normal” human being.  Charlie himself questions why society believes it acceptable to perceive the mentally disabled in such a way, when it would never adopt the same approach when dealing with the physically handicapped.  And while his intelligence is helped by scientists, Charlie becomes aware that they view him only through the framework of science; that ultimately, he is their test subject and their primary concern is for their scientific reputation, not for Charlie as a person.

As Charlie realises these cold facts about the world that he previously felt comfortable in, he withdraws further into his newfound intellectual pursuits while ignoring the emotions of human interaction.  Those around him who genuinely care for him deem him to be arrogant.  But isn’t Charlie justified in his behaviour when he struggles with the two contradicting truths of the world – the one he believed with his IQ of 68, and the one he believes with his IQ of 185?  He is damaged by the persistence of his memories of being punished for his disability, and knowing that those nearest to him believed him to be not worth as much as them.  This bit I struggled with in the book, for I could not understand why Charlie seemed to be praised for his previous, dumb eagerness to please others, when these attempts would have been ultimately futile anyway.

Perhaps it is an open-ended question that the author does not attempt to answer.  Like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, Charlie was an intellectual innocent who, by undergoing the operation to make him smart, metaphorically ate the forbidden fruit and was made to pay the price for doing so.  Adam and Eve, and Charlie too, gained immense knowledge but were evicted from the comfortable confines of the Garden.  Life outside the Garden was difficult and directionless, much like the world is for Charlie when he comes to terms with what people’s behaviour towards him really signified.

Unlike Adam and Eve, however, Charlie has a chance to return to the metaphorical Garden.  Algernon, the mouse on whom the scientific test was first conducted, is a predictor of how the operation will affect Charlie.  When Algernon shows signs of intellectual regression, Charlie fears that his unbounded improvement will also cease and reverse.  But it is not as simple as “old Charlie” becoming “new Charlie” and then regressing back to “old Charlie”.  Even while enjoying the new possibilities opened up by his acquired intelligence, old Charlie always remained in new Charlie’s consciousness – because, after all, old Charlie was a person too with real human feelings and real memories, and new Charlie must remember old Charlie.  Although new Charlie unwittingly dissociated himself from his past self (viewing the little boy as a separate entity to himself), the little boy was always haunting him.  As his mental regression grows stronger, so he reverts back to embodying that little boy watching his adult self from afar.  He is kept at bay, remembering his former glorious self through a window.

Should you read this book?
Yes, if you enjoy books that explore the ethical and practical difficulties surrounding mental disabilities and science.  Yes, if you like stories in which readers are invited to make up their own minds about the themes presented.
No, if you prefer books that are more clean; that offer up a distinct point of view and a clear set of events and values.