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Why Is Charlie Successful In Flowers For Algernon

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“In the US, about 6.5 million people have an intellectual disability” (Intellectual Disability, paragraph 10). In the story “Flowers for Algernon” written by Daniel Keyes, Charlie is one of those people. Charlie is a 37 year old man with a child's brain. All Charlie wants to do is learn but because of the mental disability he has, he can not. His brain does not allow him to learn as well as others. When an opportunity comes up for Charlie to become smarter he takes it. He became very intelligent. Suddenly he was losing his memories and did not feel as smart. The doctors realized that Charlie’s intelligence was decreasing rapidly. He was becoming inarticulate. Maybe having the operation was a bad decision. Charlie should not have had the operation because it had many negative effects on his life. To begin with, Charlie had to suffer through the pain of losing his intelligence. In the book Charlie said “ Please… please let me not forget how to read and write” (536). This proves that Charlie is scared of what's happening and how upset he is because he will most likely lose everything that he learned. Charlie also said that “It is so cruelly logical. I learned so much so fast. Now my mind is deteriorating rapidly. I’ll …show more content…

In the end he got it back but only because he became less intelligent. Charlie said that “ The first I knew of it way when Mr.Donnegan showed me the petition, 840 names, everyone connected with the factory.” What happened was Mr.Donnegan had people sign a petition and depending on how many names signed it he could fire Charlie. This quote proves that being intelligent made Charlie lose everything he loved. Such as his job and his friends. Which is not fair because Charlie was a good janitor and deserved that job. His coworkers said that he made them feel stupid when in fact Charlie was just trying to be friendly, and that is why they started the

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