Charlie Gordon is a mentally retarded person with an IQ of 68, much lower than an average person's IQ of 100. He is working in a factory as a janitor. He is also in love with his teacher Miss Kinnians. Charlie is a very honest and determined to improve person, so Miss Kinnians recommended him for an experiment-an expeiment that can change his life forever. This experiment artificially increases an IQ of a person or animal and is supervised by Dr Strauss and Dr Nemur. This experiment had already been tested on a white lab rat called Algernon. This is a very touching story about Charlie Gordon's ultimate goal of finding friendship, acceptance and love.
Flowers of Algernon: Algernon
Algernon is a depiction of Charlie's fate in the hands of Dr Nemur and Dr Strauss and the experiment. There are many similarities to be drawn between Charlie and Algernon that indicates his role as a "lab rat" for Science.
- Initially, Charlie races with Algernon in a maze ten times and loses all of them, whereby he acknowledges Algernon's awesome brain power. "I dint know that mice were so smart"(Progress report 3). When Charlie defeats Algernon after the operation shows that Charlie's brainpower is increasing.
- "Everyone identifies me as Algernon. In a way we're both the first of our kind"(Progress report 13)
- When Algernon started to be aggressive and hostile, Charlie became hostile too. When Algernon started to regress in intelligence, Charlie also regressed too.
When Algernon passed away, it is like a prediction of what is going to happen to Charlie. When Charlie weeps for Algernon and puts flowers on his grave, it is not just for the sense of connection that he feels to Algernon, but a grieving as he thought that he was going to die too. So Charlie in a way is Algernon.
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