Flowers for Algernon: Book Review
I just finished reading Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes. This is an epistolary novel written about a retarded man; he receives an experimental surgery that increases his intellectual capacity. The story is a character study, exploring how the main character, Charlie Gordon, develops emotionally in response. He deals with the problem of increased awareness of how people treat him, alienation from others as he outpaces all those around him, sexual frustration, and troubling memories that come to mind. I enjoyed the book, finding its devastating ending to be particularly hard-hitting—even terrifying. Overall (No Spoilers) This book was published all the way back in 1966. This fact alone is a fascinating detail, that makes me view it in an entirely different light. There were some funny quirks about the story, showing that it was a product of its time, like the legitimacy of Rorschach tests, psychanalysis, and other more subtle things that influence how the story proceeds, like the f...