Flowers for Algernon

Charlie Gordon, a mentally challenged man in his thirties, is chosen by Professor Nemur and Dr Strauss to undergo an experimental surgery designed to boost his intelligence. Alice Kinnian, his teacher at a night class for challenged adults recommends Charlie because he is so eager to learn to be smart. He also is without family to object or interfere.

Charlie would be the first human to receive the surgery after successful experimentation on a lab rat named Algernon. The mouse has become highly intelligent, solving increasingly difficult mazes, and the doctors are confident their treatment will transform Charlie from “a moron to a genius”.

“I just want to be smart like other pepul so I can have lots of frends who like me,” Charlie writes in his first “pogriss report”.

The surgery completed, Charlie begins to learn at an astounding rate. But while his IQ jumps from 68 to 185, his EQ – emotional quotient – remains at its original level, that of an eight year old boy. He struggles with how to interact appropriately with others – as do others with how to respond to the changing Charlie.

His co-workers at the bakery who used to make fun of him, now lobby for his dismissal, feeling uncomfortable with his inexplicably increasing intelligence. Charlie resents the doctors treating him like a human Algernon and not a person. And how should he interact with them when he becomes far more intelligent than they, conversant in twenty-two languages, and able to speed read dozens of books in days.

But even as his intelligence soars, Charlie is haunted and crippled by his old self, interfering with his budding romantic feelings for Alice. Memories from his tortured childhood and abusive family life slowly surface in his dreams.

He is torn by his past, his changeable present, and uncertain future – especially when he accidentally overhears the doctors discussing a problem with Algernon’s behaviour, which puts into question their confidence in the permanence of the experiment’s effects.

At a conference designed to showcase the medical phenomenons, Charlie angrily grabs Algernon and disappears, cutting off all communication. Determined to protect both of them from the endless humiliating scientific analysis, he takes an apartment and puts some time and space between himself and the doctors and Alice.

However, within a month, Algernon’s erratic behaviour drives Charlie to return to the lab and ask to be part of the team to determine the flaw in the experiment. He needs to work quickly before he regresses too far, for now all are certain that he will lose all he has gained.

Working day and night, Charlie completes his report – The Algernon-Gordon Effect – and delivers it to the doctors. His calculations are brilliant and far too complex for the doctors to fully comprehend, but Charlie has clearly proven that the experiment was flawed and that he will regress to his former IQ, if not a more primitive state, in months, if not weeks. The funding Foundation agrees to take care of him; if he cannot look after himself in an apartment, he will return to the state home for the mentally deficient where he had been placed as a teen.

His work complete, Charlie decides it is time to visit his forgotten family to make peace with his past. Sadly, his father does not recognize him, and his younger sister, while welcoming and forgiving, is shackled by the care of their abusive mother who has ironically descended into dementia and sees only the teenage Charlie she sent away.

The weeks pass and Charlie continues to chronicle his regression. When Algernon dies, Charlie insists on burying him in his back yard. He stops going to the lab, unable to bear having his deterioration made so obvious to him. Alice tries to spend time with him, but he sends her away, not wanting her to witness his failing and pity him.

When he forgets one night and shows up for Alice’s class ready to learn, and she runs out in tears, Charlie realizes it’s time to enter the state home. He writes his last report, places flowers on Algernon’s grave, and leaves.