Title: Flowers for Algernon

Date of First Publication: April 1959

Place of First Publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction

Type: Short Story

Characters: No Character

Themes: SYMPATEHTIC MONSTER; ANDROID

Critical Summary: In Daniel Keyes’s short story, the reader is introduced to Charlie Gordon, a young man who is not very intelligent. In fact, his IQ is 68. He relays the events of the story to us through journal entries, which at first are rife with spelling and grammatical errors. At his job at a plastic box company, where he works as a janitor, he is a source of amusement and ridicule for his fellow coworkers. Charlie does not pick up on this and thinks that he has friends. But when Dr. Strauss takes a keen interest in Charlie, because of his motivation, the doctor performs an experiment on Charlie to increase his intelligence. This experiment has worked before on a lab mouse named Algernon. Charlie is suddenly very smart, but his coworkers begin to fear him, and Charlie becomes more alienated from the world. Charlie leaves his job as a result. Then Algernon’s intelligence begins to regress, until one day the mouse dies. Charlie figures out that he too will lose intelligence, and once the regression begins to occur, he mourns what will be lost. He goes back to his old job, but he cannot stand the pity of the coworkers and his boss, and this motivates him to leave New York. This story was awarded the 1960 Hugo.

Charlie Gordon and Mary Shelley’s Creature are similarly sympathetic characters. Early in the story, we see that Charlie is far more aware of his environment than the doctors give him credit for, just as the Creature takes in a great deal of information about the human world that rejects him. Both are eager to gain acceptance and to rid themselves of the qualities that make that hard to achieve. Both are the subjects of experiments they did not seek out for themselves, and the intelligence they emerge with does nothing to alleviate their isolation and loneliness. The two characters meet tragic ends, but under different circumstances. For Charlie, the experiment fails to produce permanent results, and he is painfully aware of his fading intelligence but powerless to stop it. The Creature, on the other hand, pursues his own demise, hoping to prevent the replication of Victor’s experiment. This ending speaks to “Flowers for Algernon” as well, though; both stories serve as warnings about the potentially cruel consequences science can have, no matter how good its intentions.

Administrative Notes: Nathan San Fillipo, CSUF; Alex Goodman, CSUF (edited)