Jenna Hoffman’s Reviews > Flowers for Algernon > Status Update

Charlie has found the flaw in in the experiment. How long he will keep his intelligence is directly based off of how much higher they made it. Algernon has died, and Charlie's afraid the same thing might be happening to him.

One of Charlie's doctors, Professor Nemur, is upset. Once Charlie became smarter, he wasn't the same person. He was arrogant and self-centered. Professor Nemur was expecting gratitude and praise for making Charlie smarter, but was only given a list of what he did wrong and how Charlie could try to fix it.

Charlie knows that the intelligence he was given won't last forever. He talks to the doctors and learns that if the operation failed, he would've gone to Warren, a home for mentally challenged people. He decides to visit there and get a tour of the buildings.

Algernon has been acting very strange. He's bitten both Fay and her pet mouse. He's stopped attempting to solve mazes as much, and when he does, he does it in a much more primitive manner than before.

Fay came over to the apartment, and decided she would rather spend the night there. She brought over alcohol, and got Charlie incredibly drunk. When drunk, Charlie began acting like how he did pre-operation. When Fay told him in the morning, he realized that the old Charlie would never truly go away, it would just wait. It was covered up, but not gone.

Charlie wants to see his dad. It's been 17 years since his family sent him to a home for mentally challenged people, and he misses him. When he finds his dad's barber shop, his dad doesn't recognize him. He gets a haircut, and his dad still doesn't know him. His family all believed he had been dead. Charlie panics after not being recognized and leaves.

After leaving the event, Charlie decided to start a new life for himself. He bought an apartment, and has been pretty happy there. He even brought Algernon with him. His new neighbor, Fay, is quite the character. She likes to paint in her underwear and visit whenever she feels like it, coming through the fire-escape. Charlie admires her enthusiasm.

Charlie's doctors, the men in charge of his sudden intelligence gain, have set up an event to show their work with him and Algernon, a mouse who had the same operation as Charlie. Charlie got upset when he learned most of the time he had been in the lab, they had been filming him. They even showed the films at the event while the people laughed.

Charlie is remembering his first time with a doctor who said they could make him smart. He remembers just how angry his mother would get with him whenever he did anything wrong, and how his father stood up for him.

Charlie realizes that he doesn't love Alice like he used to. He wants to love her- he wants to start a family and settle down- but he knows he doesn't feel that way. He feels their intelligence levels are like how they used to be. He's just as far away from her as when he had an I.Q. of 70 as his current 185.