Charlie's Mistreated In Daniel Keyes Flowers For Algernon

Okay, now that I have your attention, I wrote an essay about a book. In the novel Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes, Keyes demonstrates that there is widespread mistreatment of the intellectually disabled, which the perpetrators justify based on a sense of superiority, and which is compounded by the fact that it may be socially acceptable, and the victim may not know any better. Charlie, during the points where he is too naive to protect himself, is consistently mistreated and taken advantage of by society. Close to the beginning of the novel, Charlie explains that people at his work will refer to foolish blunders as “Charlie Gordons.” He writes that the head baker used his name when he reprimanded a delivery boy for losing a cake, “He

When Charlie goes to a restaurant well after his operation, he sees people amuse themselves by making fun of a mentally disabled dishwasher after he drops a few dishes, “As the boy's vacant eyes moved across the crowd of amused onlookers, he slowly mirrored their smiles and finally broke into an uncertain grin at the joke which he did not understand.” It is clear that they are using the dishwasher’s lack of knowledge that they’re making fun of him so that they can amuse themselves at his expense. When one of Charlie’s supposed friends, Frank, kicks Charlie’s legs from under him while he’s sleeping, so that he falls, and he’s told to stop picking on Charlie, he says, "’It don't mean nothing,’ laughs Frank. ‘It don't hurt him. He don't know any better. Do you, Charlie?’" Here, Frank explicitly states that he’s fine with doing this because his feelings won’t be hurt too badly, since he doesn’t know better. When Charlie is reflecting on his childhood, he recalls that he gave a valentine to a girl, and not being able to read or write, asked someone to write down something. They wrote something very dirty and offensive, and Charlie sent it. The girl’s big brother confronts him and says, “You keep away from my kid sister, you degenerate. You don’t belong in this school anyway” (54). It’s clear that he thinks himself superior to Charlie. By calling Charlie a degenerate, and saying he doesn’t belong in the school, he establishes a difference between them, which to him, justifies the beating that he then gives Charlie. Overall, it’s clear that a sense of superiority and lack of awareness of the victim are two of many ways that people try and justify mistreatment of the intellectually