«Flowers for Algernon" - a novel by Daniel Keyes, written by him in 1966, based on the same story.The book leaves no one indifferent, and confirmation - Prize for Literature for the best novel of the 66th year.The work belongs to the genre of science fiction.However, when reading his science-fiction component not notice.She quietly erased, and fades away into the background.It captures the inner world of the main characters.It is said that a person uses his brain capacity by 5-10%.What is behind the other 90-95%?Unknown.But there is hope that science will sooner or later come to the answer.And what about the soul?It's still a big mystery, with no prospect of finding its solution ...
book "Flowers for Algernon»
first page, second, third ... "sleazy" text with a lot of grammatical errors.No full stops and commas.Lean language, more like a vague confused story of five years of a child who is trying to tell us something important, but he does not leave.Confusion and questions, as Charlie Gordon, the protagonist of the novel, on behalf of the narrator, for 32 years.But we soon realize - Charlie ill since birth.He phenylketonuria, in which mental retardation almost neizbezhna.Glavny hero of the novel "Flowers for Algernon" works as a janitor at the bakery.His simple life with its joys and sorrows.Although about his troubles, he wrote little.But not because they are many or few, but because he simply does not notice.For him, they simply do not exist, "I said I do not care if people smiyatsa me.Many people smietsa me but my friends and we have fun. "He talks about his "friends" in the work of the younger sister Nora and parents who have not seen, Uncle Herman, a friend of Mr. Donner, who was filled with compassion for him, and took a job in a bakery, and Miss Kinnian, a good teachernight school for the feeble-minded.It is his world.Let the small and not always friendly - he does not care.He sees a lot and notices, but does not assess what is happening.People in the world without its strengths and weaknesses.They are not bad and not good.They are his friends.And Charlie only dream - to become a smart, a lot of reading and learn to write well, to please his mother and father to understand what his friends say, and to meet the expectations Kinnian miss that so much it helps.
His great motivation for learning has not gone unnoticed.Scientists of the Research Institute offered him a unique brain surgery, which will help him to become intelligent.He readily agreed to this dangerous experiment.After a mouse named Algernon of that went through the same operation has been very clever.It is easy to pass the maze.Charlie can not do it.
operation is successful, but it does not bring instant "cure."And sometimes it seems that it will never happen, and most likely a Man has once again deceived and laughed at him.But no.We see how in his daily "atchetah" appear points and commas.Fewer errors.Increasingly slozhnopodchinёnnyh proposals.It is not limited to the description of their daily duties.Gray days filled with a deeper sense, more complex experiences.Increasingly, he remembers the past.The fog slowly dissipates, he remembers the faces of his father and mother, hears the voice of the little sister Nora, smells of home.There is a feeling, as if someone took a paintbrush, bright colors, and decided to paint white with black outlines pictures of previous years.Ambient also begin to notice these amazing changes ....
Charlie is taken for study.What yesterday seemed confusing and frustrating today - simple.Speed training in the bakery cleaner exceed tens or even hundreds of times the pace of study of ordinary people.A few weeks later, he is fluent in several languages and reading scientific literature.His dream came true - he's smart.But whether it pleased his friends?Has he really happy?
At work, he taught himself how to bake bread and rolls, made its rationalization proposals, which would increase the income of the enterprise ... But the main thing - he noticed that those who only yesterday he loved and respected, can deceive and betray.There has been a collision, and "friends" have signed a petition for his dismissal.They are not ready to dialogue with the new Charlie.On the one hand - there were mysterious changes.But what is not clear, and in some cases even unnatural - scary and alarming.On the other hand, it's impossible to communicate on an equal footing and take into their ranks one who yesterday was a few steps below.However, Charlie now can not and does not want to be with those whom he yesterday immensely loved and respected.He learned to read and write, but at the same time he learned to condemn and take offense.
Kinnian Alice, one of the brightest female characters of the novel "Flowers for Algernon" sincerely happy with his success.They become closer.Friendship develops into mutual sympathy, and then in love ... But every day increases the level of his intelligence.Sometimes former teacher and mentor Charlie did not have enough knowledge and skills to understand it.Increasingly, it is silent, accusing herself in his failure and inferiority.Charlie, too, remained silent.His irritate her stupid questions and misunderstandings "elementary."Between them there is a small crack, fracture, which increases in parallel to increase his IQ.In addition, there is another problem: as soon as he wants to kiss her, hug and approach it like a man, it covers a strange numbness, fear, inexplicable panic, and he falls into the darkness, where to hear the voice of the idiot Charlie.What is it - he does not understand and does not want to understand.Togo Charlie no longer exists, and maybe it never was.The circle narrows.The world laughed at him when he was a moron.Changed circumstances, changed himself, but the world still do not accept it.In place of cynicism, fun and mockery came fear and alienation.Blue stamp with the words "not like the others" previously evoked in others the desire to rise, to fill their gaps by him.Subsequent events have not erased secured him the image of an outcast of society, they just painted it in other colors.New Charlie - is not a person, and "laboratory animal".No one knows how it will behave tomorrow, what to expect from him and how this will end.
from research institutes come the bad news - the strange behavior of laboratory mice.Algernon have seen rapid extinction of intelligence.The apparent initial success of the experiment ends in failure.What to do?Charlie Gordon takes Algernon, and then with him runs away from concerned scientists and psychologists from Alice and from himself.He's hiding in a rented apartment and decided on their own to understand the causes of imminent collapse.Soon Algernon dies.The autopsy shows that the his brain was significantly reduced, and meanders smoothed.Time is almost here ...
What we are given life?Difficult question ... From birth, we know the world around us and ourselves in this infinity.What role is played by the soul?What place is given to the mind?Why do some extensive soul, but "meager" the mind?For others - on the contrary?Man has always sought to uncover "this very secret," to know what is hidden there, outside "of our understanding", and each time, closer to unraveling closely, turned out to have its source.This is not surprising - we are not the creators, we are not the creators of all things.Scientific progress has allowed us to rise to the umpteenth floor of a skyscraper, and we look at the world from another window, naively believing that now before us spread the world, but forgetting that the house still is unattainable "roof".It is symbolic in this sense, the phrase sounds a nurse at the beginning of the novel "Flowers for Algernon": "... she said mozhetoni had no right to make you smart cuz if the Lord wanted shtoby I was smart he would have done so shtoby I radilsya smart ... And maybe Professor NemoursDock and play with the Strauss veschyami that lutshe astavit in pakoe »
Work on completion of the experiment was in full swing.Charlie was in a hurry, because for him it was important to find mistakes and to help future generations, and the main thing - to prove that his life and Algernon was not just experiment a failure, and the first step to achieve the main goal - a real help to people who were born with the disease.He found an error in his scientific paper left the farewell - in the near future do not put such experiments on humans.But the search for scientific evidence of what happened made him ask other questions: "So what is the mind, really?"He came to the conclusion that pure reason that so worships humanity and for the sake of all who reject those who do not have - we have nothing.We put everything on the line for the sake of illusion and emptiness.Highly intelligent people without the ability to love, from "underdeveloped" soul is doomed to degradation.Moreover, "the brain for itself" is not able to bring any benefit and progress of humanity.Conversely, a person with "developed" without the mind and soul is a "concentration" of love, the possibility is limitless, which carries the true "progress" to the human race - the development of the spirit.And before to help people with intellectual disabilities to cope with their problem, you need to deal with their own.And then, perhaps, the very notion of "the problem of mental retardation" become obsolete ...
Charlie gave Algernon burn the corpse.He buried his house, and he left the city and settled in the hospital for mentally retarded people.The book ends with "Flowers for Algernon" remarkable phrase - he is asking for the possibility to visit the grave of Algernon in the backyard and bring him flowers ...
