Flowers for Algernon Literary Analysis

Society's Misunderstanding Society tends to believe that the mentally challenged are at a disadvantage compared to a person of high intelligence, is this always true? In Daniel Keyes' short story “Flowers for Algernon”, that wasn't the case with Charlie Gordon. Due to an experimental surgery, Charlie experienced advantages and disadvantages in his life and in his mind. Charlie's operation benefitted him in many ways. For instance, Charlie, already knowing history, geography, and arithmetic, found it to be only natural that he “should start to learn a few foreign languages”. This shows that Charlie is progressing at a rapid rate; he already knows his core subjects, and foreign languages would just add on to his abundant library of diverse information in his expanding mind. This also shows that the operation is benefitting him greatly mentally; he is able to take in a massive amount of knowledge in. All this knowledge he is taking in drastically changes his view of the world. He realizes a heap of things he had no clue about the month before. For example, Charlie , realizing things he hadn't noticed before, “think[s] it's a good thing about finding out how everybody laughs at [him]”. This demonstrates that Charlie is in his beginning stages of gaining knowledge; he is realizing the pros an cons of life and analyzing whether the procedure was positive or negative. This also demonstrates that Charlie is a little hurt emotionally, but he comprehends why they would laugh at him; he will make sure it won't happen again. In conclusion, Charlie advancing mentally very quickly helped him figure out things he hadn't known or realized before. This just caused him to lose his loved ones. This just goes to show that being at a mental disadvantage isn't always a disadvantage, but a door stopper for negative potential. The procedure had many consequences as well. For instance, although he was eager to get back to work, Mr. Donnegan knew “that it would be better for all