Flowers For Algernon Comparison Essay

438 Words2 Pages

Nowadays, book getting turned into movies is a common occurrence. New York Times best sellers go from being words on a page to scenes being played out on a screen. More often than not, these movies will come with entirely new dialogue, added scenes, deleted scenes, and many other changes. One example of this the the movie Charly, a 1960’s sci-fi drama based on the short story Flowers for Algernon, written by Daniel Keyes. Many things were altered in the film adaptation to allow the movie to run more smoothly, fill in the two hour time span, and appeal to a larger audience. One of the main differences in the movie is the formating. In Flowers for Algernon, Charlie tells the story through his progress reports, which is essentially his form of journaling. Through the progress reports, readers get to see his advancements in vocabulary, spelling, and grammar. In the film, however, Charlie doesn’t write any progress reports whatsoever. He also works at a bakery in the movie, instead of a factory. With his job comes his so-called friends, who in reality are a group of cruel men that poke fun at Charlie and his mental disability. The jokes they pull are different in both. Other small changes that were made in the movie are: Charlie develops a fascination for painting, he is thirtytwo instead of …show more content…

The original story goes into very vague detail about his relationship with the teacher, but it does state that Charlie is in love with her. Their platonic-turned-romantic relationship takes up a significant portion of the storyline in the movie. Once Charlie becomes capable of looking at a woman in an affectionate manner, he begins to experience lustful feelings for her, which then turn romantic. This subject is not explored in the original story. Miss Kinnian shows a lot of support to Charlie, which is then enhanced after their transient romance