Flowers for Algernon
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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 who won an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance; second, under its own title, dramatized for BBC Radio 4 with Tom Courtenay as Charlie; in 2000 it was made into a TV movie starring Matthew Modine; and in 2002, it was made into an 11-episode drama series in Japanese television, starring Yuusuke Santamaria. It was also made into a musical starring Michael Crawford, which was performed in London in 1979. The book is often found on required reading lists in North American public schools and many major universities throughout the world.
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Plot details
The story of Flowers for Algernon centers on Charlie Gordon, a 32-year-old mentally retarded bakery assistant, 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. His IQ goes from 68 to above 200. He becomes smarter than the doctors that made the intelligence enhancing procedure. He discovers both the advantages of intelligence and awareness (his ability to form a relationship with his former teacher, Alice Kinnian) 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 involve various forms of alienation and acceptance and themes 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 such as ambition, innocence, jealousy, pettiness, and emotional development that use the trappings of a science fiction premise to relate various notions of consciousness and awareness that most 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-player character named Algernon holding a bouquet of Peaceblooms in front of the Alchemy trainer.
- In the 1999, 26-episode anime "Betterman," there is a sympton caused by an unknown factor, perhaps a virus or a mutation named Algernon, which causes people to become barbaric, similar to Charlie's regression but on a much larger scale. Betterman also has so-called "Animus Flowers" that play significant role in the series.
- 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.
- Another similar film, "Awakenings (1990)," which stars Robin Williams as Dr. Malcolm Sayer, who tries to cure a patient Robert DeNiro, suffering from a form of camatose state (induced by brain damage caused by an encephalitis epidemic many years earlier). At first, the patient, under the doctor's cure (which is a drug), the man "awakens" from his statue-like state. But after a while, he develops seizures and mood disorders, and slowly reverts to his former state. Based on a true story.
- In the episode "MACHINES DÉSIRANTES" of the anime Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, one of the Tachikomas states that it has an interest in reading books and is shown to be reading Flowers for Algernon at the time.
- Pre-dating this story considerably is the Laurel & Hardy feature A Chump at Oxford in which Laurel receives a knock on the head and realizes that he is actually the brilliant academic and sportsman Lord Paddington. This inevitably causes a rift between the two friends, until a further knock on the head transforms Stan back to his normal stupidity.
- An episode of Rugrats involved Chuckie being used for an experiment involving a cure for the common cold. A lab rat was also used for the experiment. At the end of the epsiode, it was revealed that the experiment was a failure and Chuckie and the lab rat's colds returned.
- In the SNES RPG, Breath of Fire II, when flowers bloom in a certain part of the world, a super-powerful optional boss named Algernon can be found and fought.
- In Marvel Comics' Spider-Man's Tangled Web #5-6 (Flowers for Rhino), the notably unintelligent supervillain Rhino undergoes an experiment to increase his intelligence in order to impress the girlfriend of his boss. While initially this improves his life, his exponentially increasing intelligence means he quickly becomes bored of her, and everything else (in one scene he goes to see Hamlet, and starts making notes on how to improve it), before realising his now-superhuman intellect has separated him from humanity. On the point of suicide, he instead devises a way of reversing the machine, asking the doctor "Could you make me a little dumber, just to be on the safe side?"
- In the Star Trek:The Next Generation episode The Nth Degree, Lieutenant Barclay's intelligence is lifted by aliens enabling him to do incredible mental feats, but later these gifts are lost, leaving him unable to explain how he accomplished them.
- In The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, one episode, Sheen's Brain involves Jimmy using a brain-gain helmet on sheen to make him smart for a test. The helmet goes out of control, and Sheen becomes super-smart. He even develops telekenisis. However, he thus loses his friendship with Jimmy and Carl, and drains his brain to get it back.
- In the Transformers episode Grimlock's New Brain, the normally unintelligent character Grimlock becomes super-intelligent when hit by function-inverting anti-electrons. He later builds a new group of robots called the Technobots and transfers his newfound intelligence to them, causing him revert back to his normal self.
- The book is referenced in an episode of Friends: when Joey and Chandler contemplate moving back from the large luxurious apartment to the small dingy apartment, Joey sees no problem with this. Chandler asks him incredulously, "Haven't you ever read Flowers for Algernon?!"
Trivia
Taglines
- Of mice and men.