Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

I haven't posted on here in two weeks. This summer is going by too quickly. I, as always, have been working on AP summer assignments and drinking quite a bit of coffee and sleeping many hours. I got an invitation to join Spotify a few days ago, so now there is always some sort of music in the background. This morning, I am listening to Johnny Flynn. I have things to do. I am going to write these reviews first.
How are you? I am currently reading Other People We Married by Emma Straub. I'm a few stories in, and loving it just as much as I knew I would. My Summer Reading list is being adjusted slightly, because I've received a few more books, and I would like to read those first. I saw the last Harry Potter movie last week, at midnight in a town I had never been in before. I spent the weekend away, and I loved it. I have written a few poems. My writing is changing as I am. I will tell you more about this soon.
I could ramble more about my life, but I have made you wait quite some time for these reviews, so I figure I should just move on to those. Hopefully I still remember what these books were actually about. There is no way I could've forgotten.
Here is the first review. The second will come this weekend, most likely. I will not make you wait as long this time. Probably.

A few weeks ago, I was with a dear friend of mine. We were walking near the beach, talking about plays and stories we’d read. He’d been trying to remember the name of a book for a few hours by then, because he thought I’d enjoy it. We were walking away from the beach, back towards town, and he remembered. He said, “Flowers for Algernon. That’s it.”
I checked it out of the library. I owe them a lot of money. Because they are nice people, they let me take the book out nonetheless. I began reading it a few days letter. I read slowly, in the mornings and on train rides. A woman stopped me on the Commuter Rail and told me that Flowers was one of her favorite books. She had read it as a girl. At the time, I was only a few pages in. I knew I was going to love this book. I did.
Flowers for Algernon is a classic. The story is about a man named Charlie Gordon. Severely mentally disabled, he works in a bakery. The novel is written in the form of Progress Reports, as Charlie begins to enter a testing and observation period for a procedure he may be the prime candidate for. He understands little about the world, but smiles and loves unconditionally regardless of whether or not he knows exactly what is happening around him. He is passionate about learning, about the world. This procedure takes that passion and runs with it.
Flowers follows Charlie as the procedure comes closer and is executed. The book largely takes place after, as Charlie’s brain slowly expands along with his scope of the world. The procedure’s purpose was to make him smarter, more intelligent, to raise his IQ. He was the first human that the procedure was done on. He begins to absorb life, all of the life around him, and he changes. Through this all, he still understands very little.
Charlie reads everything, and remembers. He begins to think about his childhood, memories he wasn’t previously sure he had. He becomes more aware of the people around him, and the way they treat him. He does indeed become more intelligent, but only in terms of academia. In terms of interaction, and relation, Charlie operates as a child. In a way, he doesn’t know better. He has been taken advantage of his entire life.
This book was written many years ago. Something I found very interesting was the format. As I mentioned earlier, the book is written in the form of Progress Reports. Over the course of the book, as Charlie learns more about grammar and spelling, words in general, the progress reports improve. In the beginning, he can barely write. He isn’t sure what letters to use to make certain sounds, or where to put certain symbols. By the middle of the book, his writing is flawless. His thought processes are more easy to follow. But this isn’t a necessarily a good thing. Charlie is old enough to be an adult, when the procedure is done. And he is an adult, but not inside. He learns how to spell, and how to write, but he still needs to learn how to live. This is much more difficult.
The largest symbol in Flowers is the mouse, Algernon. Algernon is intelligent, quick. The procedure was done on him many months before it is done on Charlie, and he has been closely observed. Charlie’s experiences closely parallel Algernon’s, though not at the same time. Algernon’s patterns foreshadow the events of the book.
There are also many themes. The book is about what it means to be smart. You can be smart academically, but not intimately. You can be smart socially, but not in terms of textbook. The book is about judgment, misconceptions, especially regarding people who appear to be handicapped in any way. The book is about relationships, and maturity. People are maturing all of their lives, and all at different speeds. The book is about independence, dependence, and the dynamics of our infinite world.
Charlie becomes unbelievably intelligent, but also very commanding. He doesn’t understand why other people aren’t as smart as him, or why other people don’t always want to share ideas with him. He is not entirely sure how to share, or how to express, his opinions and emotions. His life becomes intertwined with many people’s, including his colleagues and his teacher, the woman across the hall. He is not sure how to handle this. He is not sure how to act, or how to be. Flowers brings nearly everything into question, and provides no answers. That is the job of the reader.
For me, the main idea of this book was what it means to be a person, whether or not people are born and raised the way they are born and raised for certain reasons or not. Our lives and paths are shaped by our experiences, our parents and siblings, all of the people around us. Our worlds are shaped by our experiences. Is it our place to manipulate that? Is it our place to judge others, if they operate under different circumstances than we do? I am still thinking about this book.
The ending broke my heart. I would like to see the movie. I would like to read more by Daniel Keyes. I would like to see the woman from the train again, and I would like to shake her hand. I’m glad I have friends who love words as much as I do.