How Does Charlie Change In Flowers For Algernon

The short story Flowers for Algernon is about a 37 year old man with learning disabilities. He agrees to take on an operation which will enhance his speed of learning and hopefully will make him 2 times smarter. Although the operation goes as planned in my opinion the man, Charlie, has changed negatively through it. In the beginning of the short story Charlie has poor social skills and thinks people who are working with him in a factory are his friends, but they are only mocking him." Sometimes somebody will say hey look at Joe or Frank or George he really pulled a Charlie Gordon. I don't know why they say that but they always laff"(317). Charlie is not able to process what other people's words like everybody else can. Because of this he gets bullied without knowing it. After the operations effects start to take place he is able to understand that what is was thinking was not right. He is not becoming better at developing social skills either as people now avoid him, not because he’s dumb but because he is

Charlie was a likable person before the operation, all the doctors came to wish him luck: "lots of people who gave me tests came to bring me candy and wish me luck"(314). This shows Charlie was loved and liked by many people in his life before the operation. After the operation, he was not that liked by the doctors who were angry at his unwillingness and for missing two weeks of journal entry's, "Dr.Strauss is very angry at me for not having written any progress reports in two weeks"(329). He also started to lose respect of the doctors after learning they only knew two languages:"I realized Dr.Nemur is not all genius. . . . Dr.Strauss on the other hand might be called a genius, although I feel that his area of knowledge are to limited"(330-1). This shows he is becoming more and more of a judgmental, mean, and narrow minded person the more he