Flowers for Algernon

by Daniel Keyes

Prof Nemur was worryd about my eye-Q getting too high from mine that was too low and I woud get sick from it.

Then prof Nemur said remembir he will be the first human beeing ever to have his intelijence increesd by sergery.

Prof Nemur skratchd his head and rubbd his nose with his thum and said mabye your rite. We will use Charlie. But weve got to make him understand that a lot of things can go wrong with the experamint.

She says she woud never let them do things to her branes for all the tea in china.

mabey Prof Nemur and Dr Strauss was tampiring with things they got no rite to tampir with.

They changed my nerse today. This one is pritty. Her name is Lucille

If I got to werk hard anyway what did I have to have the operashun for.

intiruppted and he tolld them I was cleaning the psych department lab. Later he explaned to me their mussent be any publisity. That meens its a seecrit.

I never new before that I was dumber than a mouse.

Thinking and remembiring is hard and now I dont sleep so good any more. That TV is too loud.

I beet Algernon.

I asked Joe to tell me what was the joke that backfired and he said go jump in the lake. I guess their mad at me because I worked the mashine but they didnt get the day off like they thought. Does that mean Im getting smarter.

I dint know it then but I guess I know it now that she thought I was going to hurt the baby because I was too dumb to know what I was doing. Now that makes me feel bad because I would never of hurt the baby. When I go to Dr Straus office I got to tell him about that.

I picked myself up and Joe pushed me down again. Then I saw the look on Joe’s face and it gave me a funny feeling in my stomach.

Everyone was laughing at me and all of a sudden I felt naked. I wanted to hide myself so they wouldn’t see.

He cannot cut into it because he knows he will fail and he is afraid.

If they gave him enough time—if they didn’t rush him or push him too fast—he would get it. But nobody has time.

He treated me—even then—as a human being.

Frauds—both of them. They had pretended to be geniuses. But they were just ordinary men working blindly, pretending to be able to bring light into the darkness.

But they hold me back and try to keep me in my place. What is my place? Who and what am I now? Am I the sum of my life or only of the past months? Oh, how impatient they get when I try to discuss it with them.

one of nature’s mistakes and by our new techniques created a superior human being. When Charlie came to us he was outside of society, alone in a great city without friends or relatives to care about him, without the mental equipment to live a normal life. No past, no contact with the present, no hope for the future. It might be said that Charlie Gordon did not really exist before this experiment. . . .

In place of a feeble-minded shell, a burden on the society that must fear his irresponsible behavior, we have a man of dignity and sensitivity, ready to take his place as a contributing member of society.

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 most of all.

Algernon lies in his own dirt, unmoving, and the odors are stronger than ever before. And what about me?

I wept as I put a bunch of wild flowers on the grave.

With all the things I had learned—in all the languages I had mastered—all I could say to her, standing on the porch staring at me, was, “Maaaa.” Like a drymouthed lamb at the udder.

The nightmare of all those years had been pain enough.

She drifted around the kitchen like a ghost, picking things up, putting things away, without ever getting in the way. It was frightening.

“Charlie! No, don’t go!” She clung to me. “I’m frightened!” The role I had always wanted to play—the big brother.

I am afraid. Not of life, or death, or nothingness, but of wasting it as if I had never been. And as I start through the opening, I feel the pressure around me, propelling me in violent wavelike motions toward the mouth of the cave.

Pain as I have never known, and coldness, and nausea, and the great buzzing over my head flapping like a thousand wings. I open my eyes, blinded by the intense light. And flail the air and tremble and scream.

I keep putting it off for most of the day, but I know how important it is, and I’ve got to do it. I’ve told myself I won’t have dinner until I sit down and write something—anything.

All so cruelly logical, the result of speeding up all the processes of the mind. I learned so much so fast, and now my mind is deteriorating rapidly.

Why am I always looking at life through a window?

I think I know why I been haveing bad luck. Because I lost my rabits foot and my horshoe. I got to get another rabits foot fast.

And when I close my eyes I think about the man who tored the book and he looks like me only he looks different and he talks different but I dont think its me because its like I see him from the window.

P.S. please if you get a chanse put some flowrs on Algernons grave in the bak yard.