Flowers for Algernon

4 Pages 937 Words

Flowers for Algernon

Flowers for Algernon is about a middle-aged man suffering from mental retardation. The man is Charlie Gordon. The exposition of this novel is rather intricate. Flowers for Algernon takes place in the nineteen-fifties. Charlie is chosen to participate in an experiment that will supposedly raise his IQ. But it turns out that they turn him into a genius, and it is only temporary. Along the way he falls in love with his teacher, Miss Kinnian. But he grows so intelligent that they grew farther apart as Charlie gets smarter. There are also two doctors in the novel, Dr. Strauss and Professor Nemur.
There are many complications in this book. One is his mental retardation and his desire to overcome it. Another is his growing to be smart. People start to dislike him because of that. And then another is his decline of intelligence and acceptance of it.
The climax of Flowers for Algernon was when Charlie found out why Algernon was acting so erratically, and that he himself would face such a decline of intelligence and frustration on the way down.
The resolution of the novel comes when Charlie finally loses all of the intelligence he gained in the experiment and went to live in the Warren Home for mentally handicapped people.
The protagonist of Flowers for Algernon is Charlie. Charlie is a 32-year-old mentally retarded man. He started out a simple kind of guy, easily pleased, good hearted, and basically only understood that people liked him when they laughed at him. He was involuntarily committed to an experiment that would increase his intelligence level dramatically. He later decides to take part in the experiment and do his own studies. He notices the lab mouse, Algernon’s, behavior gets a little weird. He then discovers that this behavior is leading to Algernon’s decline, which will reflect his own. The antagonist is Charlie’s intelligence. Charlie’s intelligence gets in the way of his soc...