Charlie

         Looking for a good read? Check out Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes. My friend lent me this book a few years ago, and I truly did enjoy it. This book encompasses a plethora of emotional and intellectual insights into the mind of a mentally disabled man, Charlie. Charlie is chosen to take place in a trial to become "smarter." The book is organized entirely in "progress reports" to be submitted to his therapist. The trial doesn't only end up bringing Charlie to a normal intellectuality, he becomes a genius and he goes through a heart wrenching journey of discovering that many of his old friends weren't real friends at all. He struggles to define himself and goes through different challenges involving how he should treat others and how to react to transforming from such opposite mental abilities, especially when he figures out that his genius-level brain may not last very long. After Charlie's rat, Algernon, (who was under the same experiment as he was) dies, charlie's life seems to recede right back to his previous one.  Charlie has never been able to sustain a normal relationship with a girl, and when he finally connects with one on a personal level he can express physically, he finds out that he won't maintain his smarts, and decides to disassociate himself from society. So tragic...Charlie's unstable personality and interesting story makes the book all the more emotionally gripping.
          The most important aspect of Flowers for Algernon for me was how Charlie had to re-evaluate his social life after the experiment transformed him into a 'genius'. It was really sad seeing him go from truly believing the people he worked in the bakery with were his friends to realizing how degrading they were and how they acted as if they were far superior to him. To be able to read Charlie's journal entries or ("progress reports") made me view the world truly through Charlie's eyes, for example, when Charlie wrote about visiting the Warren State home, how panicked he was, he didn't even want to see the mentally disabled people again because he has so much trouble believing he had been like that and would be again. I mean... could you imagine now, at this point in your life being faced with the fact that within months you would have the mentality of an elementary student? I couldn't. Poor charlie, how intense those few months when he was smart must have been, interesting but..mentally devastating. It's even more devastating as you see his penmanship and spelling abilities wear off as the experiment wears off. It was literally like the whole thing never happened to him, because he hardly remembered a lot of what happened in his 'smart period.' weird to think, he could go through such a heartbreaking journey and then return to his old life- but the even more interesting part about that was how he responded. It was like he was young again...Anyways, I really appreciated this book. Highly recommended- well done, Keyes.