Flowers for Algernon

Happy New Year!! :)

I shall start my very first post of 2010 with a book review! Haha.

So, in my last minute frenzy leaving the house (heading back to my grandma's house in Malaysia), it struck me that I had no storybook in my bag! Yea, it's became kind of a habit to read on the coach back to Malaysia.. Haha, and so all the books I've borrowed have been read, and in exasperation, I grabbed a book that had sitting on my bookshelf for about 9 years, unread.

The book was Flowers for Algernon. I obviously do not usually buy books that I don't read. But this was a compulsory buy for English/Silent reading during Secondary 1. I remember they came up with a whole list of books, and randomly assigned everybody to each buy one of the particular books. Then we were supposed to exchange among ourselves after we finish reading our own book.

Well, I didn't get pass the first 20 pages or so of Flowers for Algernon then, because the book was written as kind of a journal of a mentally retarded (MR) man, and tis wahs baseekuly how he rites fo the fuhst fehw chaptuhs. Haha, yea. Worse still, he wrote on and on for those chapters without any punctuation! o_O

Haha, of course they can't let the whole book go on with such terrible spelling and grammar.

So, the story was that this guy, his name's Charlie, was selected by some psychiatrists, psychosurgeons, scientists, and what-nots to be part of their experiment. They've been trying to perform brain surgery on animals for some time already, to increase the intelligence level of the lower-IQ ones. So, they've decided that they're ready to try it on the very first human of their experiment.

Evidently, for the surgery to work, the individual must be eager to learn too after the surgery. Charlie was chosen because of his intense motivation to learn. Although he was MR with an IQ of only about 70, he was always happy and eager to learn to read and write (albeit the futile attempts). He had a cheerful and eager-to-please disposition too, always wanting to make more friends.

Prior to the surgery, Charlie worked as an odd-jobs laborer in a bakery, where he was happy with many of his friends. His friends were always laughing and happy around him, and this made him happy too, and treasured those friends.

As expected, after the surgery, coupled with his keenness to learn, his IQ started to increase rapidly (Spelling and grammar turned normal at this point, haha). Not long after, he had became an exceptional genius with an IQ of 185, even mastering about 20 foreign langauges.

However, his emotional development was compromised. Seeing things clearer than when he was MR, he realised that all along, his "friends" at the bakery have been laughing and making fun of his stupidity.

He recalled very bad childhood memories that were previously forgotten (due to poor memory of being MR), and learnt that his mother had been ashamed of him and often threatened, spanked, and screamed at him for every little thing, and especially if he caused a hindrance to his younger sister's development.

Such memories continued to haunt and affect him despite his high IQ after the surgery. Although he had became a genius, he suffered emotionally. Moreover, nobody saw him as an individual - he was often merely regarded as an experimental product, together with his most successful animal experimental counterpart, Algernon the rat.

So the book goes on about what he experiences, and later, when the unexpected failure of the experiment surfaces, what happened to him, and to Algernon as well.

Apparently it's a sad ending la. Haha.

Oh well. It's still nice, and good for a short read. Less than 300 pages! :D Haha, anyway, I wiki-ed it and found that they actually made it into countless movies, TV shows, musicals, stage-plays, etc...and in various languages too!! [Click here to find out more!]

Woohooo! Maybe I'll hunt down some of the shows and movies to watch when i'm more free :)

Yay. I feel happy, cuz there's one less dust-collecting book on my shelf now. Haha. The simple joys of unexpectedly discovering something nice :)

Maybe one day I'll be garang enough to read Perfume as well o_O Haha.