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.
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