Charlie And Algernon Quote Analysis

the theme for my story is “too much of a good thing can be a bad thing”. This is evident when charlie starts to lose his intelligence. Charlie was apart of an experiment intended to raise a person’s IQ synthetically, and 3 times the original amount. The goal was achieved but the side effects were unbelievable: after it ultimately wore off, Algernon- the test rat- died, worrying everyone. Soon, Charlie began to lose his intelligence and he ended up right where he had started.

Charlie had everything at the climax of the story (he had intelligence [something he never had] which made him very happy). As the falling action took place, Charlie got to his all time low and he came close to suicide. Soon after, Charlie wasn’t smart enough to even know what he had lost.

In the story, it says “They’ve driven me out of the
He lost his job, he realized how dumb he was before, and he severed good relationships (not to mention it wore off, possibly leaving him dead too). In the story it said, “Algernon died 2 days ago.” This quote is strongly hinting that Charlie will probably die too, because Charlie and Algernon underwent the same experimental operation to synthetically enhance intelligence by almost 3 times the patient’s original IQ. Obviously, dying doesn’t do much good to a person’s life. Some people could say “it gave Charlie a glimpse of what normal people see!” but what good is a glimpse when you can’t even comprehend what you experienced a few weeks ago? To conclude, the operation that Charlie went through in “Flowers for Algernon” was nothing but bad. Charlie did have a couple weeks to feel almost normal (almost meaning he was smarter than everyone around him, making him feel less normal) but that ended quite quickly, possibly killing him. Charlie even came close to suicide during his downward spiral. This is my opinion on the theme for “Flowers for