Charlie's Innocence In 'Daniel Keyes Remembers'

The best speculative stories start from a simple question: "What if…?" And this remarkable novel is no exception. Daniel Keyes's science fiction stories were periodically published during the 1950s, before he became a fiction editor at Marvel Science Fiction. Besides, he also worked as a high school teacher for mentally disabled adults. Of course, these two experiences have resulted in the masterpiece Flowers for Algernon. The idea for this story suddenly struck the writer while waiting for an elevated train to take him from Brooklyn to New York in 1945. In his memoir Daniel Keyes remembers,

"I thought: My education is driving a wedge between me and the people I love. And then I wondered: 'What would happen if it were possible to increase a person's intelligence?'"

Published in the mid-to-late century, this rough, uncoloured novel of perseverance, truth and humanity still has a strong impact on a present-day world, becoming engrossed in reading this intellectual bestseller over and over. This novel is like a message with a lot of philosophies grounded in, giving rise to never-ending train of thought.

And the first one is a society’s mistreatment of the mentally disabled, revealed through the concept of artificially both

Even though his intelligence grows to beyond that of a normal human, he is emotionally still very much a child and has to learn the things other people learned long ago. Charlie is initially warmhearted and trusting, but, unfortunately, the more he understands about the outward things, the more he recoils from any human contact, getting cold, arrogant and disagreeable. The incompatibility of intellect and emotion erects a wall between Charlie and the rest of a world, not allowing the first one to progress in a proper direction and serve his psychological