Blog #2 - One Sentence Summaries - Flowers For Algernon

The story introduces Charlie Gordon, a retarded adult, who is writing "progris riports" suggested by Dr. Strauss to self analyze Charlie on his adventure of Strauss's new experiment.

Charlie is given a Rorschach inkblot test and all he sees on the papers are inkblots and nothing else.

Alice, Charlie's teacher, suggests Charlie as a human subject for Dr. Strauss's intelligence-building procedure after testing it on animals, successfully.

Algernon is a mouse Strauss has successfully experimented on and Algernon always beats Charlie in a maze test.

The scientists have located Charlie's sister, Norma, and gets her permission to experiment on Charlie.

Alice visits Charlie before the experiment and Charlie says that he's looking forward to becoming smart like everybody else.

It has been three days after Charlie's experiment and he claims that nothing is happening but still has to continue writing his progress reports that he now knows how to spell.

Charlie finally beats Algernon at a maze race and he starts to recall childhood memories.

Literally overnight, Charlie has mastered punctuation and starts to show daily improvement on his spelling and grammar skills.

Charlie remembers childhood memories of his mother, and basically his mother hated him for being retarded.

Charlie starts to grow feelings for Alice and realizes that he is also capable of making moral judgements.

Charlie starts to grow feelings of depression after an incident with Alice and all he wants is to be alone.

Charlie realizes he knows more about the experiment than Strauss and Nemur so he takes Algernon and leaves them.

Charlie moves into an apartment and experiments on Algernon because whatever Algernon goes through most likely Charlie would go through as well.

Charlie finds out through Algernon that his problem solving abilities start to vanish so he prepares himself that when he becomes retarded again he has to go back to the Warren home.

In this chapter Charlie visits his mother who tries to kill him with a knife.

Charlie finally goes back to his retarded state but also realizes that friendship is much more important than intelligence.

Blog #1 - A letter to your teacher

Dear Mrs. Reed, the book I read today was Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes. The book was absolutely amazing! It was a very emotional and inspiring book about a retarded adult, Charlie Gordon, and how he developed literacy and basic learning skills through a new experiment.
What I thought about the story was that it was brilliant. I loved experiencing the same adventure as Charlie through his point of view. As a reader I got to learn more about his family and history and it was fantastic how the author put that in the story.

It was sad though at the end how he lost grip of intelligence and had to go back to a Warren home for retarded adults. During the part where Charlie knew he was going back to what he used to be, it made a reader think of all the different possible endings.

For me I thought that the whole part of him being smart was just a dream and he woke up in Strauss's lab and they realized that he was only smart in his dreams rather than in real life. Or that it was all real and he died at the end just like Algernon. My imagination for the ending went crazy for this particular book because the character developed so much in such a short period of time that he could have developed growing up. It was also very emotional for it all to go by. I'd say that this is one of my all time favorite books and it is a must read for readers of all ages.