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Charlie Gordon Flowers For Algernon

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“Miss Kinnian says maybe they can make me smart. I want to be smart.” (Keyes, 53) Is what Charlie Gordon tells the readers as he is writing in his progress report. In the story “Flowers For Algernon,” written by Daniel Keyes, Charlie Gordon has an IQ of 68. He doesn’t spell very well and really tries as hard as he can to fix that. There is an operation that helps him and triples his IQ, but there are many side effects. He will eventually die of brain deterioration which ultimately makes him end up moving away so that his teacher, Miss Kinnian, and the doctors don’t feel sad. I really do not think Charlie should have gotten the operation.

First and foremost, he will eventually die of brain deterioration. After Charlie triples his IQ, he starts some more research about his operation and the mouse they did it on first, Algernon. After a while, Algernon dies. Charlie gets a little suspicious and does an autopsy. He finds out that he died because of the operation and he lost a lot of brain mass. “Dissection shows that my predictions were right. His brain had decreased in weight and there was a general smoothing out of cerebral convolutions as well as deepening and broadening or brain fissures. I guess the same thing is or will soon be happening to me.” (Keyes, 80) He is realizing that his brain is doing the same thing. …show more content…
He doesn’t want the doctors or Miss Kinnian to feel sorry or sad for him. When he is moving away, he leaves a letter making it clear that his is never coming back. “That’s why I’m moving away from New York for good. I don’t want to do nothing like that again. I don’t want Miss Kinnian to feel sorry for me. Everybody feels sorry for me at the factory and I don’t want that either.” (Keyes, 85) He really hates when people feel sorry for him so he moves

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