Flowers for Algernon, a Nebula Award winner for Best Science Fiction Novel in 1966, was subsequently made into a film, Charly, which won Cliff Robertson an Academy Award. Despite these accolades, however, it's #43 on the American Library Association's 100 Most Challenged Books List. Daniel Keyes' novel has been banned in Plant City, Florida; Emporium, Pennsylvania; and Glen Rose (Arkansas) High School. It has been challenged by Oberlin (Ohio) and Glenrock (Wyoming) High Schools. Protesters cited "distasteful love scenes" among their reasons for opposition.
Coincidentally, Banned Books Week happened to coincide with my sixth-grader's Accelerated Reading List deadline. She has to earn twenty-five points by reading books at her reading level (Grade 7 to 10) and passing comprehension tests after each one. Flowers for Algernon, written at a seventh grade reading level for intellectual levels 13 and up, would earn her sixteen points. As she saw me reading it, absolutely engrossed, she asked if she could borrow it when I was done.
Suddenly, my reading was serving a dual purpose. Not only was I re-reading Flowers for Algernon for the Banned Book Week Writeoff, I was also pre-screening it for my sixth-grader (and her friends, who all thought the book sounded wonderful.)
Suddenly, I really started hunting for those distasteful love scenes! Would the school librarian, a dear, sweet, nun, think I was a bad parent if I let my daughter read the book for her Accelerated Reader test? Would the other parents condemn me for being one of those freethinking Yankees?
If they do, they do. Flowers for Algernon is a book I'm proud to have my daughter read.
Flowers for Algernon
Charles Gordon, age 32, is an educable mentally retarded adult suffering from PKU disease, a genetic illness. Despite his limitations, he works full-time at a bakery, attending night classes to learn how to read and write.
His powerful motivation to learn attracted the attention of the scientists at the Beekman Institute, who were ready to test out an experimental surgical technique to markedly increase intelligence on their first human subject.
Charley's story is written in the form of first-person journal entries, or progress reports, written over an eight-month period between March and November. The reader first meets him as he is undergoing preliminary testing at the Beekman Institute, unable to do a Rorschach test or beat Algernon, a surgically enhanced white mouse, running a maze. His entries, filled with misspellings and grammatical errors, indicate naivete, the inability to think abstractly, and other indications of retardation. They also reveal his determination, work ethic, and likeability.
After his operation on March 8, the content of his journal entries changes, week by week, as he experiences a dramatic surge in intelligence. He learns many languages, composes a concerto, and does breakthrough scientific research. The remainder of the story chronicles the changes he goes through, physically, intellectually, and socially, the death of Algernon, and the tragic flaw in the scientists' thesis that rendered the "Algernon/Gordon Effect", tragically, temporary.
Why Adolescents Should Read This Book
- Flowers for Algernon helps children understand that people with disabilities are people first. Reading his first-person account gives them insights into how a person with intellectual limitations feels. Seeing the bakery workers making fun of Charley through Charley's eyes teaches them how wrong it is to be cruel to those who are different.
- Even the scientists who helped Charley considered him to be less of a person before his surgery. During an important seminar, they showed films of Charley before his surgery and alluded to him as perhaps 'never really having lived' when he was retarded. This shows students that even well-intentioned professionals can be unwittingly cruel if they don't have respect for all other people.
- Charley has a good work ethic, is a highly motivated learner, and knows how to laugh at himself. Reading Flowers for Algernon shows students that retarded people can have personal qualities that many "normal" people would do well to emulate.
- After his surgery, Charley goes through an emotional adolescence at a highly accelerated rate, but, nevertheless, it is adolescence. Students can identify with his struggles for love, self-acceptance, friendship, and affection, and realize that these struggles are universal.
- Even when he is faced with the biggest challenge of his life, trying to see where the Beekman Center's scientists went wrong in their hypothesis, Charley realizes that intellect is best used in the service of humanity. When he is faced with the inevitability of his mental decline, he contemplates suicide, but realizes that "Charles Gordon" only borrowed "Charly's" body, and that "Charly" has the right to get his life back. In this way he models self-sacrifice and almost super-human courage.
- Flowers for Algernon teaches children compassion, and, more importantly, it allows them to empathize with the protagonist. Just as Charley has compassion for Algernon, wanting him to have a proper burial instead of being incinerated, and putting flowers on his grave in the backyard, children will have compassion for Charley.
- Charley's parents didn't do everything right. When he was a teenager, his mother coerced his father into sending him to the Warren Home for the Mentally Handicapped. Yet, as Charles Gordon, he visits his father and mother. He sees his mother in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease, and, in a rare moment of lucidity, she lets him know why she sent him away. He realizes that he has to forgive his mother and get past his anger if he wants to be mentally healthy. Adolescents tend to think that their parents make lots of mistakes, even if they never put them into homes for the mentally handicapped. The example Charley sets in forgiving his mother for an almost unforgivable hurt is one they should read.
- Charley's daily journals and his thirst for self-knowledge set an example for young people to follow. They are at a stage in their lives when they are changing rapidly, like Charley. They need to learn who they are so they can resist peer pressure and be their authentic selves.
Do The "Distasteful Sexual Scenes" Make the Book Inappropriate for Young People?
Although there are sexual scenes in Flowers for Algernon, none of them are explicit.
As Charley tries to come to terms with his past, he experiences many flashbacks to his childhood. Although all of the references to his early sexuality are described only briefly, the pivotal experience of his adolescence, when he is sent away from home to live at the Warren Home, occurs after he has touched his sister inappropriately.
Charles Gordon's adult sexual experiences are initially sidetracked by the ever-present image of the retarded Charly watching through a window. His first affair is with a free-spirited artist across the hall, Faye, and, although it lasts several months, it is emotionally on the level of an adolescent fling. The physical aspects of their affair are alluded to only briefly.
His second relationship, with Alice Kinnian, his teacher, is a true love affair. Although their first episode of lovemaking is described in three or four long paragraphs, Charley writes about his feelings of commitment, love, and oneness, ending with the realization that only with love is a sexual relationship complete. This is a lesson I hope my daughter and other young people will appreciate and take to heart.
There is no violence or bad language in the book.
There are a few references to religion. Charley's mother constantly prayed that a miracle would occur and her son would become normal like the other kids. She even took him to a doctor for shock treatments which were supposed to increase his intelligence.
When Charley had his surgery, his recovery room nurse stated that it was against God's will for the doctors to try to alter the Charley God made. She was later removed from the case.
The sexual references, although they were essential to Charley's self-discovery and self-acceptance, and although they were an integral part of the book, were not so graphic that I would forbid my daughter to read it.
Is It Good Science?
Scientifically, I had a few bones to pick with the book. If Charley was 32, his mother was, most likely, in her late fifties, quite young to be suffering the effects of Alzheimer's Disease.
I also wondered why, if Charley had PKU disease, the scientists never recommended he follow any special diet after they increased his intellectual capacity once again. Could his new, improved brain have been compromised by a protein-rich diet in the same way that an undiagnosed PKU infant's brain could be damaged by the failure to follow dietary restrictions?
Summary
Flowers for Algernon is a sensitive, well-written book which will break your heart at the same time it inspires you to be a better person.
I was very surprised to see it on the American Library Association's List of Challenged Books.
This review was written in celebration of Banned Books Week, September 23-30 as part of a writeoff. Participants in the writeoff include elorraine, wildvirgogirl, teskue, jenninca, penguinlady, janesbit1, jennifer_gibbons, eric_james, elizajane, jgibson2, erik_kosberg, susanwhiple, foxfroggy, kinganamort, and kurt_messick.
Recommended:
