Charlie Gordon's Character In Daniel Keyes 'Flowers For Algernon'

Flowers Essay “How strange it is that people of honest feelings and sensibilty, who would not take advantage of a man born without arms or legs or eyes—how such people think nothing of abusing a man with low intelligence.” - Daniel Keyes. In the short story “Flowers for Algernon” by Daniel Keyes, Charlie Gordon, a man with low intelligence, wants to be smarter, and live life like everyone else. He gets the chance to join an experiment, which makes him a genius, but sadly later the effect has subsided and his intelligence was low again. Although Charlie has a low IQ during the beginning and ending of the story, most of the time, his identity and character allows him to contribute to society during the course of the story.

Before the surgery, Charlie Gordon’s identity and character can best be described as a hard worker and student who enjoys his work,his

To prove my point, let’s look on progress report 9- April 6: “I beat Algernon!” Well, this shows an example of change because that was the first time he has ever beat Algernon, his mouse-partner. That evidence displays Charlie’s type of trait, he does contribute to the society by showing that the surgery does work (after a few days). A point to show that Charlie Gordon’s identity, while he has a high IQ, still does help the society is found in progress report 11- July 4: “I am sending you a copy of my report entitled, “The Algernon-Gordon Effect: A Study of Structure and Function of Increased Intelligence.” This evidence reveals that Charlie is really sad about Algernon’s death and writes a report of all their experiences, battles and their friendship, which gives the society/other people the opportunity to read the story. Again, these traits show that Charlie does contribute to the society. [Maybe add that people can learn about the experiment from this study.] Now let’s take a look to his changes after the