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A review by tits_mcgee
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
challenging
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
The best that speculative fiction has to offer. Keyes takes our prejudices and our attitudes towards intelligence and puts them on a pedestal for us to observe, using his protagonist Charlie as our own personal Guinea pig. We are taken on a journey that is filled with heart-warming, depressing, and anxiety inducing moments; alongside these emotional moments Keyes is presenting us with some profound questions about what makes us human, the combination of which will leave you feeling nothing less than existential dread.
“I don’t know what’s worse: to not know what you are and be happy, or to become what you’ve always wanted to be, and feel alone.”
Why do we value intelligence so highly? Is it an ancestral inheritance - something we’ve learned to adopt in order to survive? Or is it a kind of vanity - something we attach unnecessarily to our identity?
Flowers for Algernon explores our relationship with intelligence by giving us Charlie, a low IQ simpleton, and transforming him into a super genius using a speculative fictional technology. We get to witness a broad cast of characters react to him as they watch his transformation, how their attitudes change and how they value him differently.
“Only a short time ago, I learned that people laughed at me. Now I can see that unknowingly I joined them in laughing at myself. That hurts the most.”
In a way this book is like watching ourselves, how we act towards people we deem “lesser” vs how intimidated and threatened we are towards people we can’t intellectually compete with; a sick cultural disease that we need to fix, perhaps?
Flowers for Algernon is without a doubt one of the saddest books I’ve read. The reactions Charlie gets from people, and his dissociative episodes are a real tear jerker. I just wanted to protect Charlie, both when he was dumb and also when he was intelligent, for he was just as outcast in both circumstances.
Fantastic book, highly recommend.
10/10
“I don’t know what’s worse: to not know what you are and be happy, or to become what you’ve always wanted to be, and feel alone.”
Why do we value intelligence so highly? Is it an ancestral inheritance - something we’ve learned to adopt in order to survive? Or is it a kind of vanity - something we attach unnecessarily to our identity?
Flowers for Algernon explores our relationship with intelligence by giving us Charlie, a low IQ simpleton, and transforming him into a super genius using a speculative fictional technology. We get to witness a broad cast of characters react to him as they watch his transformation, how their attitudes change and how they value him differently.
“Only a short time ago, I learned that people laughed at me. Now I can see that unknowingly I joined them in laughing at myself. That hurts the most.”
In a way this book is like watching ourselves, how we act towards people we deem “lesser” vs how intimidated and threatened we are towards people we can’t intellectually compete with; a sick cultural disease that we need to fix, perhaps?
Flowers for Algernon is without a doubt one of the saddest books I’ve read. The reactions Charlie gets from people, and his dissociative episodes are a real tear jerker. I just wanted to protect Charlie, both when he was dumb and also when he was intelligent, for he was just as outcast in both circumstances.
Fantastic book, highly recommend.
10/10