Diction And Figurative Language In Daniel Keyes Flowers For Algernon

Have you ever wondered if experiments meant to increase people's IQ are possible? Within his novel Flowers for Algernon, the author Daniel Keyes tells the story of Charlie Gordan, a 32 year old man who has been mentally challenged since childhood. Shortly after Charlie’s 33rd birthday, he is given an operation meant to increase his IQ, and the operation is successful in boosting Charlie’s IQ. But, after obtaining his newfound IQ, Charlie starts remembering parts of his childhood, and later starts to see his mental health worsen, along with having to deal with recurring hallucinations. In his novel Flowers for Algernon the author, Daniel Keyes, uses diction and figurative language to display how inequality can drive people to cause change within

At one point, the main character, Charlie Gordan, states, “I, like this boy, had foolishly played the clown” (127). The author making this comparison is at first glance simple seeming, but in actuality is truly a amazing form of the figurative language technique of metaphor since it is a comparison not using ”like” or “as” to compare, and in this instance is being used to compare the young boy/young Charlie to the foolish beings that are clowns in a circus. The significance of this comparison to the novel is helping to show that Charlie has gained the awareness to be able to tell how he was a foolish person in his youth, and even further can tell if others are foolish as well, as seen with this boy. Later on in this progress report, Charlie thinks to himself, “Now I can see that unknowingly, I joined them in laughing at myself. That hurts most of all” (127). This example of figurative language is an example of irony because, after gaining his newfound wisdom, Charlie realizes that he changed from being the target of everyone else's jokes to laughing along with others at other peoples misfortunes. The significance of why Keyes included this example of irony in the story is that it reveals the shift occurring in Charlie's life, the change being how he went from an oblivious and childlike person before the operation, to a mature and adultlike person after the operation. At another point in the report, Charlie thinks to himself, “I see that even in my dullness I knew that I was inferior” (127). This is another example of irony, but, instead, is stating that, even when he was an oblivious moron, he realized he was below other people in the world who weren't in his situation. Keyes probably included this example of irony to show that even before Charlie knew what the world was like he could still tell that he was a lesser compared to the rest of