Flowers for Algernon

I read Flowers for Algernon for summer reading. I didn't like it that much, but I think you are going to find it is pretty interesting.


This book was about a man named Charlie who was born retarded. He really wanted to be smart. He went to a lab in a school and wanted the doctors to fix him.The doctors did. Then he fell in love with one of the teacher in the school. He thought he loved her, but that teacher Alice Kinnian didn't think it would be going to work. Her feeling for Charlie was confused. Charlie however became smarter and smarter. Before the doctors made him smart there was a little mouse named Algernon. The doctors were using Algernon to test before they put the test on human, but the test on Algernon worked and Algernon became a really smart mouse. Now Charlie was a genius.The people from the bakery that he used to work for didnot like him anymore because now Charlie was becoming a really smart person. His friends from the bakery wanted the old Charlie back and Charlie won't listen so he got fired. Now that he lost both his job and friends he struggled to become happy. To one point in his life he realized that being smart doesnot buy you all the happiness in the world. Charlie went back to visited his family whom he had really bad memory about especially with his sister who used to hate Charlie,because he was always in the way of her. Like this time that his sister Norman wanted a dog and her parents was going to give her one if she gets a A on her history test, and Norman did get an A . When she asked for the dog her father wanted Charlie to help Norman feed the dog, but Norman thought he was dumb and she always shared stuff with him so she did not want to share. Her father got very mad, so Norman didnot get the dog and she was really angry with Charlie. However, when Charlie went back to visit his parents his sister already knew Charlie was getting smarter (she signed the paper when Charlie wanted to try to make himself smart). His mom too was glad he was back but they were still very shocked, later his mom was so shocked that she still thought that he was the old Charlie so she was trying to hurt him. Later, Charlie moved into an apartment. and he met aother girl Fay, but they broke up later on and Charlie got back with Alice. But good things never last. Charlie discovered that Algernon's brain had begun to go back. He was acting really mean and aggressive. Charlie got information from his doctors and he knew that he was going to end up like Algernon since they were treated with the same surgery. Later, Charlie became mean and aggressive and Alice however worred about him and let a housekeeper bring food to Charlie everyday. At the end Charlie's brain went back to normal-----which him was retarded again and all the people felt really sorry for him especially Alice but now Charlie cannot tell what's happening. His friends from bakery started to be friends with him again and Charlie got his old job back at the bakery.

This is a very interesting story, but I don't really like the ending, because I think it was just sad that Charlie had to go back to the way he was, but I think the story was trying to teach us that you can change who you are because you are made that way.