Surgeries and operations are things a number of people undergo. It tends to benefit the patient in the long-run physically or mentally. Lena Coakley’s “Mirror Image” is a short story that explores the life of Alice after she has a brain transplant, while Daniel Keyes’ “Flowers for Algernon” introduces the reader to Charlie who undergoes an operation that makes him immensely intelligent and is expressed in progress reports. Although there are positive and negative effects to the main characters, the outcomes of their abnormal operations greatly affect the people around them. Initially, Alice is appreciative about her operation saying, “[her] old body used to weigh much less than this body weighs but I still wouldn’t have been able to walk …show more content…
In “Body Image”, Alice has been given another chance to live with her brain transplant while the body she overtakes is superior to her old one. She gains confidence with the new body for it is stronger and has less blemishes. In “Flowers for Algernon”, Charlie desires to become more intellectual and earns this chance by going through an operation improving his IQ and mental state. Coakley and Keyes show that these operations are possible in the future and display the positive effects for the recipients. Like most situations, all things good must come to an end. Alice is now subjected to being a specimen to science as “Girl X” while the news and media constantly follow her for the new medical breakthrough she’s been a part of. Her familial relationships are greatly affected by the operation making her living situation awkward. On the topic of affected relationships, Charlie’s intelligence open his eyes as he discovers his friends and co-workers never had interest in him due to his ignorance shielding their disinterest. The distrust he creates from this discovery gives him a solitary personality through the middle of the story. Over the course of time, Charlie’s mental state and abilities degrade bringing him back to his where he began. From reading the two short stories, a reader learns that a change to oneself physically, emotionally and mentally can also change the people around them in those ways positively and