Daniel Keye’s Flowers for Algernon tells the story of a man who undergoes a momentous change. The main character, Charlie, has been labeled as “slow” and “stupid” all his life. He is regularly teased and bullied by strangers and “friends” from his job at a bakery. This all changes when Charlie’s teacher, Alice, brings him to a trial for an operation that will supposedly make him smarter. At first, the operation is a success and Charlie gains intelligence at an extremely rapid pace. However as time goes on Charlie begins to deteriorate and eventually return to his former self. The movie adaptation of this book entitled, Charly, although different from the book in many ways, is similar in how the characters in the book treat Charlie as his …show more content…
When Charlie sees the workers at the bakery laughing at him he begins to laugh with them, happy that he had been able to make them laugh. Although this exact scene does not occur in the book, there are many that are very similar to this one. For example, one night two workers at the bakery take Charlie to a party. The workers encourage Charlie to dance with a girl, as he starts to dance someone trips him, which continues to happen multiple times. Charlie falls at one point, and as he begins to stand up someone pushes him back down. Another person gives Charlie a plastic apple that he bites into, these incidents cause eruptions of laughter from both the workers and complete strangers. Flowers for Algernon was published in 1959 while the movie, Charly, was produced in 1968. I think the way that some people treated Charlie in both the book and the movie is extremely different from how he would be treated today. An example of this occurred in the movie when workers from the bakery send Charlie to go “wait for snow” a pair of police men drive by. When Charlie tells them what he’s doing one laughs and calls him stupid as he drives