Flowers for Algernon: Ignorance is Bliss, Knowledge is Curse (Book Review)

“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.”

Rating: 9.8/10 (A+) ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

     The science fiction novel is written in a series of “progress reports” by the main character, Charlie Gordon. Charlie is a 32-year-old mentally disabled man with an IQ of 68. He works in a bakery and attends classes at night to learn how to read and write under Ms. Alice Kinnian. Because Charlie wants to be smarter, Ms. Kinnian recommends him for an experimental surgery never done before on humans designed by Professor Harold Nemur and Doctor Strauss. They believe that this operation can increase Charlie’s IQ just as it did with a mouse named Algernon who has become super-intelligent.

     Although the effects weren’t noticeable at first, Charlie’s intelligence gradually increases and the operation becomes a scientific breakthrough of paramount importance. Charlie’s life begins to change. Then suddenly, he begins to remember his past, his family and how people treated him before he became smarter. Hallucinations of his younger past disturb him every now and then. As time goes by, even when his intelligence increases, his overall happiness ultimately decreases as he is haunted by the cruelty of the people in his life. Then suddenly, Algernon begins to deteriorate. The question now is, will it also happen to Charlie in some way?

Is Ignorance Bliss? (Knowledge vs. Happiness)

    Fanny Birden is a coworker of Charlie. In one conversation, she tells Charlie that it was a sin for Adam and Eve to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. Thus, trading knowledge over eternal happiness. This trade-off between happiness and intelligence is one of the most important themes in the novel. As Charlie becomes progressively more intelligent, he discovers problems he didn’t know he had. Although throughout the novel, we see Charlie finds pleasure learning new information from studying and researching, at the same time, it doesn’t bring him total happiness. In the end, Keyes doesn’t really refute the idea that ignorance is bliss: indeed, he shows that Charlie is at his happiest when he’s mentally disabled, and at his most miserable when he’s a genius. However, he questions whether bliss should be the only goal of the human race. As Charlie gets more and more intelligent, he becomes less happy—but this certainly doesn’t mean that his life is a failure. Moreover, Charlie’s sense of responsibility would be utterly foreign to his blissfully ignorant self. This reminds us why Charlie is the hero of the novel, and also reiterates that there are good reasons to “leave the Garden of Eden.”

Bullying and Cruelty is a Result of Insecurity

     The novel explores how people mock and bully their intellectual inferiors, partly out of cruelty, and partly out of insecurity. There are times when people bully other people to feel better about themselves and remind their place in society as being higher than some even when we are actually average. We become cruel towards people who are inferior to us, even if it’s a little bit.

     Charlie was bullied and teased for his low IQ by his male coworkers. They see Charlie as a target of their intellectual insecurity, so they play pranks on him. And Charlie doesn’t even know he was being played and bullied. Then Charlie became a genius and he realized that he was being bullied by his coworkers. When the news of his transformation reaches the bakery, his co-workers suddenly ignore him because they don’t want a reminder of their own mental inferiority.

    However, the novel also shows that people can learn to remove the tendency to be cruel to their inferiors, it’s possible to replace this tendency with kindness and understanding. The novel teaches us about the dangers of bullying. There’s simply no sense in bullying someone because nobody’s place in the social hierarchy is permanent.

Overall Thoughts

     This is an absolute favorite novel of mine. It is genius on how it portrays Charlie. You can clearly see the progress of his transformation in the way the progress reports are written. If you are looking for a moving reading experience with a vast range of emotions, I recommend this beautifully written book. The story also dives deep in the exploration of psychological issues that are relevant today, even when it was written back in 1966. It gives us one concluding question about our lives, “Will we sacrifice our own happiness to satisfy our own pride?” Read the book to answer that question yourself.

     The novel is the winner of the Hugo Award and Nebula Award which are both given for excellence in science fiction works. It has also been adapted into an Academy Award-winning film Charly.