"Flowers For Algernon" By: Daniel Keyes - Reading Response

 Flowers For Algernon  is about Charlie, a thirty two year old man who works in a bakery in Brooklyn and is mentally ill.  Charlie has a passion for learning, even though his IQ is only 70, he still wants to become smarter and treated normally. Charlie agreed to be experimented on and gets permission from his family, to get this procedure done on him, this is the first time it is being tested on humans. It was tested on a mouse named Algernon, and he became really smart. But they don't know how it will work with humans, There are many pro's and con's, Charlie could either get really smart, or less intelligent than he already is now. So he is told to keep a journal with " progress reports" and that is how the story is told.


  I find this book interesting because, the author choose a really creative way to write the story. Since Charlie is slow, and the book is written from his perspective, he writes everything the way that he hears it, so most of the spelling in the book is incorrect and so is the grammar. So a word like Progress Report, would be spelled like this in Flowers For Algernon "Progris Riport"  Even though, i'm only on page 61, the author did a good of showing how much progress Charlie has made by getting this procedure done. Because when I look back at page 1, and compare it to the page that I am on now, the writing and the grammar is really different. Which shows that Charlie has gotten smarter.

  "Burt  comes in to see me evry day to rite down all the things like my tempertur and my blud preshur and the other things about me. He says its on account of the sientific methid. They got to keep reckerds about what happins so they can do it agen when they want to. Not to me but to other pepul like me who aint smart" (pg 11)
  I found this quote intriguing because, this was at the start of the book when his writing was really hard to understand so it adds more emotion to it. But, the end of the quote when he says "... so they can do it agen when they want to. Not to me but to other pepul like me who ain't smart" I think it shows that he has hope that everything with this experiment is going to turn out well. Because if he didn't , he wouldn't have said they would test it on other people. But at the same time, it shows that he doesn't really have high self esteem, because he just called himself not smart.


I'm starting to think that things will turn out well for Charlie during this experiment, because I'm only on page 61, and he is already understanding a lot more english and his writing is becoming more understandable. I remember in the beginning of the book he had said
"I never new before that i was dumber than a mouse. I dont feel like riting any more progress riports. I forget things and even when i rite them in my notebook sometimes i cant reed my own riting and its very hard" (pg15)
   I think that the author did a really good job of showing how the main character progressed over time by his writing techniques.