Charlie's Journey: Overcoming Intellectual Disability in Flowers for Algernon

I believe that Charlie is the character who has an intellectual disability. He starts with an IQ of 68. Throughout the story, Charlie is told to write down everything he is thinking for a progress report. This is the basis of the story. This disability affects his life in many ways. Mainly, everything he has to do can be very time consuming. For example, Burt Sheldon has him take what Charlie calls a "raw shok" test. His literacy teacher has him write this progress report everyday which could also be time consuming because it is keeping him from sleeping.

I think that everyone in the story has a good view of Charlie. They all want to help him succeed in his life. They help him collect his thoughts. His teacher helps him with his language skills. Alice is the one who recommends that Charlie be used as a human subject for an intelligence-building procedure due to his eagerness to learn. I feel like she believes in Charlie and wants to help him learn in any way she can.

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Strauss and Nemur decide to follow through with this idea by questioning him. There's one problem, Charlie doesn't know where his parents are.

In today's society we have much better views of people who have disabilities. Though I think the characters had good intentions in this story, in today's society we look more for ways to help someone rather than "cure" them. The Alice, though was always very supportive of Charlie and believed in him through the operation and even after.

This is similar to how we are today. There are less judge mental people around who are willing to help. We know more about the disabilities now then they did in this setting and it is easier for us to understand that maybe there is no cure and that we should just try to find ways to help. I also believe that we have better materials and technology to find help. In the story they use a mouse and a maze as the test to see if Charlie is getting better. At first the mouse beats him every time.