Ashley-Flowers+for+Algernon

=Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes =

**__Author Biography__** Daniel was born in Brooklyn, New York on August 9, 1927. He attended Brooklyn College where he received an A.B. degree. After attending Brooklyn College, he got a job as an associate editor for //Marvel Science Fiction, then worked as an English teacher.// In 1952 settled down and married his wife, Aurea Georgina Vazquez then had three kids. __Flowers for Algernon__ began as a short story published in 1959. Shortly after its publication, the story won the Hugo award and was adapted for tv in 1961. Currently, the book has sold five million copies, been translated into 27 different languages, and has also been made into a Broadway musical. By 1966 Keyes was teaching in the English department in Athens at Ohio University. At OU he lectured students, taught, and was in charge of the writing center. Daniel now resides in Boca Raton, Florida.

**__Synopsis__** Charlie Gordon is a very likable, innocent, and gentle young man. He has a steady job at a local bakery, and a lot of friends. The only problem is that he has an unusually low IQ. He gets the opportunity to have an experimental intellegence-increasing surgery that could possibly change his life forever. The surgery has previously been tested on a lab mouse named Algernon. Like Algernon, Charlie's intellegence grows tremendously. Eventually, his intellegence grows to surpass the doctors who performed the surgery on him. Everyone thinks, without a doubt that the surgery is a success: doctors have taken a man with a well-below normal IQ and transformed him into a genius. Doctors and Charlie believe this can change the lives of the millions of the mentally challenged. Soon Charlie becomes a human sponge soaking up every bit of information he can het his hands on. He learns (and masters) languages both alive and dead, and begins his own psychological research. Not long after the peak of his intellegence and research, Algernon starts acting erotic and begins rapidly deteriorating. Charlie fears the same will happen to him.

**__Criticism__** I wasn't sure I believed the librarian when she told me that I would need Kleenex when I was reading this book. She said it was really sad. I didn't end up needing the Kleenex, but she was right; it was pretty sad. The sadness worked in this story. It helped to see that all of the events that had previously happened in Charlie Gordon's life all had some effect on him. I found the saddest parts were the parts of the story where the characters lacked respect, respect for themselves and the others around them. In the middle of the story there is a sad part involving Charlie and his past co-workers. His co-workers ganged up on him while the boss wasn't looking. He was so afraid of what could've happened, and so confused about why they were acting that way that he (as he put it) "made himself". The parts where Charlie was //with// a woman didn't add anything to the story. I didn't need to read about his relations with women or how he thought about women, in those terms, to understand the psychological growth and confusion that accompanied him after his surgery. However, even those events, as I said above, all had an effect on Charlie Gordon.

**__Literary Information__** Genre: Science Non-Fiction Point of View: Third Person

**__Citations__** "Anyway, I hope I get smart soon because I want to lern everything there is in the werld like the collidge boys know. All about art and politiks and god" (Keyes 20). "Today, I learned, the //comma//, this is, a, comma a period, with, a tail, Miss Kinnian, says its, importent, because, it makes writing, better, she said, somebody, could lose, a lot, of money, if a comma, isnt in, the right, place..." (Keyes 38). "But even as I write these words, something inside shouts that there is more, I'm a person. I was somebody before I went under the surgeon's knife. And I have to love someone" (Keyes 85).

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