Daniel Keyes
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Theme is the general truth behind the story.
Sometimes it is called the lesson or moral of the
story.
Science has a moral responsibility to society.
Or just because we can, should we?
Learning new material increases knowledge;
knowing when to use it, is wisdom.
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It is a diary or journal.
Charlie calls them progress reports.
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This is a first person narration.
This limits the reader to seeing only what
Charlie sees.
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Charlie Gordon
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Charlie seems uneducated, mentally slow, and
childlike.
He also seems happy and enthusiastic.
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He couldn’t see any pictures.
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He wanted to become smart.
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He thought school could make him smarter.
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He cannot tell the difference between
imagination and lying.
Would he be able to tell why this baby is
crying?
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He is a white mouse used for a laboratory
experiment in intelligence.
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He’s a white mouse.
That’s the only thing that Charlie can see that
makes Algernon different from any other
mouse.
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He wants to be smart.
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It will triple his intelligence.
His IQ will change from 68 to 204.
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A rabbit’s foot, a lucky penny, and a horse shoe
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He has become frustrated and angry. He does
not think the operation has worked.
What he does not realize is that learning is
difficult and sometimes even painful. His
frustration is evidence that he really is learning.
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Getting smarter takes time.
Algernon had the operation earlier, and so he
has a head start on Charlie.
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No, they are using him for entertainment.
He thinks they are his friends because they
spend time with him.
They also laugh with (at) him. He sees only the
laughter, not that it is at him not with him.
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He tries to sleep through it.
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They abuse him and make fun of him.
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Charlie beats Algernon.
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Charlie begins to develop a sense of conscience.
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There is no longer any challenge in racing him.
He feels protective of Algernon.
He feels it’s wrong for Algernon to have to pass
a test in order to earn his food.
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The experiment has ramifications beyond
Charlie.
Regardless of what happens to Charlie, science
has learned from him and his operation.
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It shows a deeper understanding of the world.
It leaves the concrete world and enters into the
abstract.
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WHY?
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She always give him a reason.
She explains things to him.
She genuinely cares about him as a person, not
just as a laboratory experiment.
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There is no contest. Charlie always wins.
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He realizes that their friendship was fake.
They were making fun of him to make
themselves feel more powerful and smarter.
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He now is able to use his imagination.
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He sees her as a beautiful, attractive woman.
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The people at the factory fear the changes they
see in Charlie.
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Since writing proved to be too slow for his
thoughts, he was learning how to type.
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He finds it difficult to communicate at their
level.
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He laughs, then he sees himself in the busboy.
He realizes that others have been laughing at
him right along.
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A physical disability is obvious.
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A mental disability is not.
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He decides to continue on with the scientific
investigation into human intelligence.
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He has become vicious and unpredictable.
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He, too, will begin to fail.
He and Algernon have followed the same path
in character development.
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To work on his own special project: The
Algernon-Gordon Effect.
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Intelligence will decrease at the same rate or
even faster than is was increased.
The intelligence increase is only temporary.
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It creates a strange sort of déjà vu for him.
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It feels like someone else wrote his reports.
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He has no understanding of what he wrote.
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He is perplexed by the work.
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The format is returning to his original style.
The spelling is slipping. They are becoming
shorter.
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He still loves her, but she has now become to
him as before.
She is his teacher, not a girlfriend.
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They are protective of him.
They are more comfortable with him now that
he has returned to his old way.