Flowers For Algernon Greed Quotes

“I trust that everything happens for a reason, even when we’re not wise enough to see it” (Oprah Winfrey). In the novel, Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes, a man named Charlie Gordon is mentally challenged and cannot understand even the simplest of things. Charlie goes through an operation to become intelligent and it works; but it wears off in just a few months and he regressed back to where he started—the way he was his entire life. Many would say that this is a bad thing and that it is unfortunate for Charlie Gordon to not be able to realize obvious things—but is this really a bad thing? Some may believe that it is Charlie’s fate to be dumb so that he is blinded by the negatives of the world and remains in a constant state of happiness.

When Charlie was still dumb, he believed that he was going to make new friends and be much happier once he became smart. However, despite what he thought, his co-workers at the bakery hated him after the operation. Charlie thought that his intelligence is what will cause him to be just like his co-workers, but, he has grown even smarter than his “friends” and they do not like it. Charlie was always being laughed at and now he has passed everyone in intelligence. To show, “Because all of a sudden you’re a big shot, a know-it-all, a brain!” (Keyes 105). Charlie was getting hate because he was acting like “a know-it-all” and acting superior to others and the co-workers were used to being superior to Charlie. They do not like the change and because of that, they hate Charlie and he is back to a state of loneliness—a state that he thought he would never be in again after the

He always thought that his “friends” actually were his friends but they were just using him and taking advantage of him. But, once Charlie gets smart and actually has actually has a clue of what is going on, he suffers from a lot of disappointments. Charlie is experiencing disappointment once he realizes that when his “friends” laugh at him, they are not being nice and friendly. He was unaware that the true meaning of this laughter was to make fun of him and that he was being used for comedic reasons only. To show, “I never knew before that Joe and Frank and the others liked to have me around just to make fun of me. Now I know what they mean when theys say ‘to pull a Charlie Gordon” (Keyes 42). So, now he is aware of the truth—Charlie is being used as entertainment and none of them see him as a friend as he had previously thought. Obviously, not knowing things was bliss; but the truth left Charlie heartbroken and extremely disappointed—especially when he catches Gimpy stealing from the store. Charlie was fated to be retarded as he was and he was genuinely happy when he did not know about the bad in the world and the negative way that his “friends” were treating him and the way they were