Charlie

Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon, 1966
I have a brother who was brain damaged when he was two months old because of an allergic reaction to a vaccine. He's now nearly thirty years old but his mind is like that of a baby, and because of that he needs help with everything, constant care. He can't walk, can't talk, can't eat for himself. I've always wondered what it would have been like if he hadn't had that allergic reaction. What kind of adult would he have grown up to be? Which profession would he have fallen into? I sometimes see a man on the street that looks like him and those familiar questions pop up.

Flowers for Algernon reminded me of my brother because it's about a "retarded" adult, Charlie Gordon, who is given the chance to become intelligent with an experimental operation. Written as an epistolary novel, the story is documented by Charlie in journal entries that start out quasi-unintelligible, getting progressively better written as his intelligence improves. Charlie is surrounded by people amazed at what he can become just as I would be with my brother if his condition improved. But with intelligence also come questions of how the world treated Charlie when he was "retarded" (badly, without pity), the motivations behind his "creators" (selfish) and his own journey into understanding his family (tragic).

Part Frankenstein, part Icarus' myth, with a surprising dash of Breakfast in Tiffany's thrown in towards the end, Flowers for Algernon is dated in someways, but that's why (IMO) it's so charming. The ending is as predictable as Sci-fi stories were in the 50s and 60s, but the characters' emotions are complex and fully fleshed, unlike most Sci-fi today.