posted on 27 Oct 2019

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

First published in 1966, Flowers for Algernon in novel form was the result of an adaptation of American author, Daniel Keyes’ successful, award-winning, short story of 1959. For some reason I find hard to pin down, it’s a book (as was the short story) that has been labelled as science fiction which I think wrongly pigeon-holes the book and probably limits its readership. It’s also a book that’s attracted it’s fair share of controversy in the United States where it has periodically been on High School reading lists and frequently challenged by the puritanical tendency in parent association circles who seem obsessed with any references to sex regardless of how mild and how appropriate it might be to the integrity of the story.

Reading the book today there will also be those who now find the language used about people with learning disabilities uncomfortable but it does, of course, reflect the dominant discourses of the time in which it was published. I would argue that acknowledging and understanding how and why these linguistic and attitudinal crudities were so prevalent does in fact add to the richness of the reading experience and need not detract from it however much it now seems unenlightened.

Charlie Gordon has an IQ of 68 and works as a floor sweeper in a bakery (he has a job there for life because of the past relationship between the shop owner and Charlie’s father) and he’s generally happy playing the butt of gentle, even affectionate, ribbing by the rest of the staff. But things are about to change for Charlie when he’s recruited to be the human guinea-pig for an experiment to increase intelligence. This follows successful trials on a white mouse called Algernon who has shown exponential increases in intelligence since the surgical intervention.

Slowly at first and then with increasing speed, Charlie starts to develop and his intelligence grows. The problem is that his emotional and social intelligence doesn’t develop at the same pace as his intellectual abilities and he struggles to come to terms with being the centre of curiosity, with his need to form complex sexual and emotional relationships and with outgrowing even his previous mentors.

He breaks free of control and stakes a bid for his independence, a move that coincides with his own discovery that the data on the experiment that had given him this new found intelligence has been misinterpreted and that he and Algernon the mouse are doomed to revert to their original condition. From this point onwards it’s a race for Charlie to make contact with the family that had given up on him and to try and make his peace with his past.

Both Algernon and Charlie start to show unmistakable signs of erratic behaviour and when the mouse dies Charlie buries him in his back yard rather than let him be seized by the lab and probably incinerated.

The book ends with Charlie back where he began and back in the workplace he so briefly outgrew. But all is not quite the same again because Charlie has changed the outside world and somewhere in his memory the ghosts of his intelligent self still lurks in the shadows.

The whole tale is told by Charlie through his submission of written ‘reports’ which ostensibly scientifically log his progress through the experiment. The reports start off in a childish hand, phonetically spelt and full of bewilderment and misunderstanding. As the surgery on his brain starts to yield results, the written reports become increasingly sophisticated until they peak and begin to revert to the simple and naïve.

I would defy you to read this book and not find yourself ending it with a lump in your throat. I have no idea if Keyes wrote anything else that came close to the delicate beauty of this one. And I’m in good company when it comes to admiration because I’ll leave the last word with another enthusiast for this book, Isaac Asimov, who said:

“Here was a story which struck me so forcefully that I was actually lost in admiration . . . for the delicacy of his feeling, for the skill with which he handled the remarkable tour de force involved in his telling the story,”

 

Terry Potter

October 2019