Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Flowers for Algernon was sad. When was it written? In the 60s. The short story came first, then the novel. Obviously. It is about a mentally challenged (what is the appropriate term now?) man, Charlie, who gets selected for an experimental treatment and suddenly becomes an extremely intelligent person. His IQ goes from 75 to 185, and what that means to him emotionally and personally.
The first thing that struck me as interesting was the structure. It’s written as a series of “progress reports” he makes for the sake of the experiment. In that sense, it reminded me of The Martian—isn’t that also a series of “logs”?
At the start of the book, the POV character still has an IQ of 75 and that’s reflected in the writing: bad spelling, bad grammar, malapropisms, baby-talk. And after he undergoes the treatment, you can see it get progressively better. That was really interesting to look out for. The author does this really smoothly. (Maybe I should mention that the events of the entire book take place within a few months.)
Another thing: For its time, the book makes a really impressive case for the humane treatment of mentally challenged people. A case for neuro-diversity. One of the things that angers Charlie the most is when the scientists claim that he was nothing before the treatment and that the treatment made him human. He keeps making the point that he was a person even before the treatment.
By far the most interesting thing in the book is that Charlie becomes aware that he’s going to lose his mental faculties just as quickly as he got them. This feels like it was supposed to be a big twist but it was telegraphed. But I don’t mind. Because this experience of consciously losing your intelligence is heartbreaking and very well written. He decides at one point to go to Warren, an institute where he was to be housed after “the experiment” and he sees what his future is going to be. He sees these dull, dumb faces of the “children” there and recognises both his past and future in their eyes. Tragic.
Towards the end, there is this one small section where he starts getting impatient with all the tests and therapy sessions he’s being put through. The Rorschach test is one of the things that he has to do and you see him realise that he’s forgotten how to do the test. He knows he should be seeing something in the ink, that there’s more to the whole thing, but he just can’t see it anymore. It’s back to being just ink. Oof.
Anyway. The end got a little sappy. But a good read overall.
And now onto Infinite fucking Jest.
