Charlie is an adult in his early thirties. He lives a very unusual life. He was born with a severe learning disability. He works a job as the janitor at a local bakery and attends Beekman School for retarded adults. Dr. Strauss and Professor Nemur are looking for a candidate to have a surgery they invented to increase the candidate’s IQ. Charlie is eligible for this operation. The operation has never been done on a human, but they have done it on a mouse named Algernon. The operation was a success for Algernon and in the beginning of the book Algernon is smarter than Charlie. Charlie becomes frustrated with Algernon when they do mazes and Algernon beats him. Charlie feels really dumb and he wants to have the surgery. Professor Nemur and Dr. Strauss agree to give Charlie the surgery. When the surgery is over Charlie doesn’t seem any smarter but the doctors/scientists aren’t worried. They give him a T.V. to turn at night which should help him to learn and they correct him when he spells something wrong. Charlie begins to become smarter, he is able to beat Algernon in the mazes and he can read and write better. Charlie begins to feel a connection between him and Algernon they don't compete anymore but Charlie still likes to visit Algernon.
The writing style of this book is very interesting.
The book is written from Charlie’s prospective. It is written as Progress
Reports which are presented as a series of short entries Charlie is
supposed to write for the scientists. The spelling in the beginning of
the book is horrible, everything is spelled the way it sounds (which is,
interestingly, not the correct way to spell many words!). As the book goes on
the spelling becomes better and eventually nothing is spelled wrong. I thought
that was an interesting way of showing Charlie progressively becoming smarter.
So far I am enjoying the book, I'm curious to see how Charlie's knowledge progress
as the story goes on. I can't wait to read more and give you guys more updates!
