Flowers for Algernon

by Daniel Keyes

“The more intelligent you become the more problems you’ll have, Charlie. Your intellectual growth is going to outstrip your emotional growth.

Now I understand one of the important reasons for going to college and getting an education is to learn that the things you’ve believed in all your life aren’t true, and that nothing is what it appears to be.

I see now that when Norma flowered in our garden I became a weed, allowed to exist only where I would not be seen, in corners and dark places.

A child may not know how to feed itself, or what to eat, yet it knows hunger.

I am afraid. Not of life, or death, or nothingness, but of wasting it as if I had never been.

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