Flowers For Algernon

Flowers for Algernon is the title of a short story (and a later novel) by Daniel Keyes. It takes the form of a diary kept by a 37-year-old man, Charlie, who has a low IQ. He becomes a subject in a medical experiment that is aimed at increasing intelligence. The experiment apparently succeeds, and the diary entries change as his intelligence increases and he becomes more aware of himself and society. Unfortunately, the effect of increased intelligence is only temporary, and Charlie (and the diary’s language) regresses once more to his former state. It is, I think, implied, but not made explicit, that the experiment has also caused his death.

 

It is a tremendously moving story that affected me deeply when I first read it over forty years ago.

 

Now I see that the diary entries have been transcribed into a blog. Because blogs customarily display the most recent entries first, this has had the interesting effect of now telling the story in reverse order – a sort of Memento effect. I’m curious to see whether this will work. I just wish that whoever was behind putting up the blog had bothered to spell Daniel Keyes’ name correctly…

 

(hat tip to Cognitive Edge for the link)