Daniel Keyes - Flowers for Algernon

Children circle around him laughing and teasing him like little dogs snapping at his feet. Charlie smiles at them. He would like to put down his bundle and play games with them, but when he thinks about it the skin on his back twitches and he feels the way the older boys throw things at him. Coming back to the bakery he sees some boys standing in the door of a dark hallway.

“Hey look, there’s Charlie!”

“Hey, Charlie. What you got there? Want to shoot some craps?”

“C’mere. We won’t hurtya.”

But there is something about the doorway-the dark hall, the laughing, that makes his skin twitch again. He tries to know what it is but all he can remember is their dirt and piss all over his clothes, and Uncle Herman shouting when he came home all covered with filth, and how Uncle Herman ran out with a hammer in his hand to find the boys who did that to him. Charlie backs away from the boys laughing in the hallway, drops the bundle. Picks it up again and runs the rest of the way to the bakery.

“What took you so long, Charlie?” shouts Gimpy from the doorway to the back of the bakery.

Charlie pushes through the swinging doors to the back of the bakery and sets down the bundle on one of the skids. He leans against the wall shoving his hands into his pockets. He wishes he had his spinner. He likes it back here in the bakery where the floors are white with flour-whiter than the sooty walls and ceiling. The thick soles of his own high shoes are crusted with white and there is white in the stitching and lace-eyes, 32 and under his nails and in the cracked chapped skin of his hands. He relaxes here — squatting against the wall leaning back in a way that tilts his baseball cap with the D forward over his eyes. He likes the smell of flour, sweet dough, bread and cakes and rolls baking. The oven is crackling and makes him sleepy. Sweet… warm… sleep.

Suddenly, falling, twisting, head hitting against the wall. Someone has kicked his legs out from under him.

That’s all I can remember. I can see it all clearly, but I don’t know why it happened. It’s like when I used to go to the movies. The first time I never understood because they went too fast but after I saw the picture three or four times I used to understand what they were saying. I’ve got to ask Dr. Strauss about it.

April 14-Dr. Strauss says the important thing is to keep recalling memories like the one I had yesterday and to write them down. Then when I come into his office we can talk about them.

Dr. Strauss is a psychiatrist and a neurosurgeon. I didn’t know that. I thought he was just a plain doctor. But when I went to his office this morning, he told me about how important it is for me to learn about myself so that I can understand my problems. I said I didn’t have any problems. He laughed and then he got up from his chair and went to the window. “The more intelligent you become the more problems you’ll have, Charlie. Your intellectual growth is going to outstrip your emotional growth. And I think you’ll find that as you progress, there will be many things you’ll want to talk to me about. I just want you to remember that this is the place for you to come when you need help.”

I still don’t know what it’s all about, but he said even if I don’t understand my dreams or memories or why I have them, some time in the future they’re all going to connect up, and I’ll learn more about myself. He said the important thing is to find out what those people in my memories are saying. It’s all about me when I was a boy and I’ve got to remember what happened.

I never knew about these things before. It’s like if I get intelligent enough I’ll understand all the words in my mind, and I’ll know about those boys standing in the hallway, and about my Uncle Herman and my parents. But what he means is then I’m going to feel bad about it all and I might get sick in my mind.

So I’ve got to come into his office twice a week now to talk about the things that bother me. We just sit there, and I talk, and Dr. Strauss listens. It’s called therapy, and that means talking about things will make me feel better. I told him one of the things that bothers me is about women. Like dancing with that girl Ellen got me all excited. So we talked about it and I got a funny feeling while I was talking, cold and sweaty, and a buzzing inside my bead and I thought I was going to throw up. Maybe because I always thought it was dirty and bad to talk about that. But Dr. Strauss said what happened to me after the party was a wet dream, and it’s a natural thing that happens to boys.

So even if I’m getting intelligent and learning a lot of new things, he thinks I’m still a boy about women. It’s confusing, but I’m going to find out all about my life.

April IS-I’m reading a lot these days and almost everything is staying in my mind. Besides history and geography and arithmetic, Miss Kinnian says I should start learning foreign languages. Prof. Nemur gave me some more tapes to play while I sleep. I still don’t know how the conscious and unconscious mind works, but Dr. Strauss says not to worry yet. He made me promise that when I start learning college subjects in a couple of weeks I won’t read any books on psychology-that is, until he gives me permission. He says it will confuse me and make me think about psychological theories instead of about my own ideas and feelings. But it’s okay to read novels. This week I read The Great Gatsby, An American Tragedy, and Look Homeward, Angel. I never knew about men and women doing things like that.

April 16-I feel a lot better today, but rm still angry that all the time people were laughing and making fun of me. When I become intelligent the way Prof. Nemur says, 34 i I I with much more than twice my I. Q. of 70, then maybe people will like me and be my friends.

I’m not sure what I. Q. is anyway. Prof. Nemur said it was something that measured how intelligent you were-like a scale in the drugstore weighs pounds. But ii Dr. Strauss had a big argument with him and said an I. Q. didn’t weigh intelligence at all. He said an I. Q. showed how much intelligence you could get, like the numbers on the outside of a measuring cup. You still had to fill the cup up with stuff.

When I asked Burt Seldon, who gives me my intelligence tests and works with Algernon, he said that some people would say both of them were wrong and according to the things he’s been reading up on, the I. Q. measures a lot of different things including some of the things you learned already and it really isn’t a good measure of intelligence at all. So I still don’t know what I. Q. is, and everybody says it’s something different. Mine is about a hundred now, and it’s going to be over a hundred and fifty soon, but they’ll still have to fill me up with the stuff. I didn’t want to say anything, but I don’t see how if they don’t know what it is, or where it is — how they know how much of it you’ve got. Prof Nemur says I have to take a Rorschach Test the day after tomorrow. I wonder what that is.

April 17-I had a nightmare last night, and this morning, after I woke up, I free-associated the way Dr. Strauss told me to do when I remember my dreams. Think about the dream and just let my mind wander until other thoughts come up in my mind. I keep on doing that until my mind goes blank. Dr. Strauss says that it means I’ve reached a point where my subconscious is trying to block my conscious from remembering. It’s a wall between the present and the past. Sometimes the wall stays up and sometimes it breaks down and I can remember what’s behind it. Like this morning.

The dream was about Miss Kinnian reading my progress reports. In the dream I sit down to write but I can’t write or read any more. It’s all gone. I get frightened so I ask Gimpy at the bakery to write for me. But when No 35 Kinnian reads the report she gets angry and tears the pages up because they’ve got dirty words in them.