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Book Review of Flowers for Algernon

Flowers for Algernon
reviewed on + 80 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 7


This is a sad, moving book about Charlie Gordon. He begins the book as a kind and sweet retarded man who wants to learn, so he allows himself to be experimented upon. The book is a compilation of his progress reports, and theough them we see him gain inteliigence, slowly at first, but then ever increasingly until he is a genius.

While his intelligence grows, his emotional status does not, and the kind harmless man dissappears and is replaced by an arrogant angry man who finally understands all the bad that has been done to him by those who were suppsoed to care for him and love him.

They say ignorance is bliss, and apparently this book is saying the same thing. It just made me sad. Sad that, once attained, his new found intelligence could not make him happy, and sad that people on the whole prefer him stupid so they can make him the butt of their mocking. Sad of all, I see today's society no different in their treatment of those thought to be inferior.

A great book, thought provoking and humbling.