Flowers for Algernon
By Daniel Keyes
summary
The book is about a boy named Charlie who struggles in life with his disabilities. He goes to a doctor regularly. They decide he's perfect for this experimental surgery that could make him smarter. He gets the surgery done and he is getting smarter then he realizes his whole life people were making fun of him because he would do stupid things and not notice. His whole life starts falling apart because of the experiment and he hates it. His social life increases but he doesn't enjoy it. He then comes to the conclusion that his real friend is a mouse that he has been competing with for the experiment, because he doesn't make fun of him.
charlie
Charlie is a mentally challenged college student that struggles with being social because of his disabilities
Conflict
Charlie is tired of being challenged by life and wants to fix it. He does an experimental surgery that makes him smart and that was his main goal all along, now that he is smart everything's ok right? No, he starts to realize that his whole life people made fun of him. He worked at a bakery for people with disabilities and now he has become too smart to work there and doesn't want to leave but they fire him, he becomes anti social and do stupid things when he does go out with people.
Guilt and Blame
It would be the theme because he is rejected by his family and friends because of his disabilities. He gets rid of his disabilities and he is too smart to associate and work with his old workers so he is forced to be fired.
Textual evidence
So many big words jump out of the paragraph that I don't know and I had to look them up but they were deep meaning words "Am I a genius? I don't think so. Not yet anyway. As Burt would put it, mocking the euphemisms of educational jargon, I'm exceptional-a democratic term used to avoid the damning labels of gifted and deprived (which used to mean bright and retarded) and as soon as exceptional begins to mean anything to anyone they'll change it. The idea seems to be: use an expression only as long as it doesn't mean anything to anybody. Exceptional refers to both ends of the spectrum, so all my life I've been exceptional." It shows that he is being betrayed by everyone and he's not comfortable on how he feels right now
I give the book 4 stars
I give the book 4 stars because of the way the put the book, they make it a lot more graphic then what it needs to be and not all the content is suitable for all people. The book could easily be 5 stars for someone who is into special education
Multi-media source
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuIbnpP9kE0 I selected this video mostly for the way he writes his name in the beginning to show how much his life is challenged