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- Summary: Flowers for Algernon
Summary: Flowers for Algernon
These book summaries are designed as captures for what I’ve read, and aren’t necessarily great standalone resources for those who have not read the book. Their purpose is to ensure that I capture what I learn from any given text, so as to avoid realizing years later that I have no idea what it was about or how I benefited from it.
A retarded man undergoes treatment to increase his intelligence, along with a lab mouse named Alergnon
The book is largely told through the perspective of his journal entries, which he’s required to maintain as part of the study
As he is still stupid, he talks about the friends he has at the bakery he works at
He also has a teacher who he really likes, and who takes special care to help him learn to read
As he gets smarter he learns that his friends were mostly just making fun of him, which makes him sad
He soon catches up to their intelligence, and then passes them. He even passes the professors who are doing the study on him
He gets so smart that he can read 25 languages fluently, etc., and comes to find a flaw in their research
He learns that his progress is temporary, and that he and Algernon will soon become violent, lose the IQ they’ve gained, and then return to being completely stupid
In the meantime, while he’s smart, he falls in love with the teacher he’s long had, but he pushes her away because he knows he’ll be dumb again soon
Algernon dies
He becomes completely dumb, like before, but now he has true friends back at the bakery where he works, and people protect him
The last scene has him going back to class at the school for retarded adults, and sitting in class with the same teacher
He doesn’t really remember her, and he asks a basic question about how to spell something
She runs out of the class crying
He makes a note to remember to pick some flowers for Algernon
Lessons
Sometime’s it’s better to be ignorant of how mean people can be
Intelligence grants transparency, and that could be a bad thing
There’s a beauty to ignorance, a simplicity
It’s strange to love someone in different states of maturity and capability. It reminded me a lot of Alzheimers or something, where you are loving what someone used to be, or could have been, or something.
[ Find my other book summaries here. ]