Flowers for Algernon

[Guest guest]

Flowers for Algernon

Finally got around to reading this one after seeing a number of references to it lately. Quite interesting on a number of levels (an allegory for aging and senility for one, not sure if that was intended though one character clearly had it).

A couple of points I will address here. (I'm going to avoid saying anything specific so as not to give anything away if anyone wants to read it.)

In the beginning, characters were mean to Charlie but he didn't get it. The bullying wasn't just words, but physical and setting him up to humiliate himself. It also mentioned several times how the other children were particularly cruel to him. At one point Charlie thinks that all the people who would never tease someone born without arms or legs. However, someone who is born mentally different, in Charlie's case retarded, is fair game. This is very true. In my neighborhood there was one retarded child and one smart one. Both caught a lot of flak from the other "normal" kids, although at least one of them was below average IQ himself. This carried on into school as well. However, things changed a bit because some of the dumber kids learned strong social skills and because bullies that way while the smart kids, especially if they were also smaller, were the targets, all the more so as they became more isolated from others by the bullies.

Another point of the whole is kind of an anti-intellectual theme. This is kind of strange given Charlie's desire to be smart. He gets to be smart alright, but seems to become very unhappy about it. He also sees many of the other smart people as phonies and frauds because they are narrowly focused in their education and know little else. Now, that is something I have often said about the higher degrees, that the people who have them are very well trained in a narrow field, perhaps too narrowly as they might miss certain connections had their education been broader and they studied more subjects. However, in many cases that's not really a big deal: a surgeon doesn't need to know quantum physics to be a top notch surgeon. My point here is that Charlie got less happy with his life as he got smarter even though through his work he was accomplishing great things.

Which leads to my last point.

Charlie only became happy not only when he became less intelligent, down to about average, but when he had sex. Not only was "average" being held out as the best way to be, but also that a sexual relationship was the only way to find happiness. What's interesting about this is that it reflects the psychological theories of the day. That is to say they were extrovert-focused with a Freudian fixation on external attachments as one's measure of worth. Simply put: one only had value if you had friends, were doing things for people, and, course, you have to be having sex. If you didn't have lots of friends, weren't constantly surrounded by people and doing things with them, and having sex with at least some of them, something was really wrong with you. This is the theory that has continued to dominate American culture ever since and it probably responsible for the sad state of our schools, businesses (business schools preach the teamwork, groupthink and extreme extroversion as the three great goods), and the mania of our culture for popularity, fame, and a desperate desire to be liked, and to be constantly having or thinking about sex.

What's interesting about that is it ignores the possibility that Charlie could have become inward focuses, more Jungian, and found meaning through his work. Indeed many of the most creative people have been introverted and found their source of value in their work. They still had friends and all, just they weren't how they measured their worth, the product of their work gave them that. I just found it interesting from a cultural standpoint that this extrovert meme was present in the book.

I was kind of upset, however, that Algernon never reproduced. I would liked to have seen if the author had had his intelligence pass on via Lamarckism.

Anyway, it was a good read and had plenty to think about. Now I'm going to have to look back through the episodes of Ghost in the Shell and find that scene where the Tachikoma is reading this same book and listen more closely to what it says. The book does rather apply to them as AI's that are evolving faster than expected.