The idiot who’s smarter than you. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes.
“Any one who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the eyes are of two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from coming out of the light or from going into the light, which is true of the mind’s eye, quite as much as of the bodily eye; and he who remembers this when he sees any one whose vision is perplexed and weak, will not be too ready to laugh; he will first ask whether that soul of man has come out of the brighter life, and is unable to see because unaccustomed to the dark, or having turned from darkness to the day is dazzled by excess of light. And he will count the one happy in his condition and state of being, and he will pity the other; or, if he have a mind to laugh at the soul which comes from below into the light, there will be more reason in this than in the laugh which greets him who returns from above out of the light into the den.” — The Republic, Plato
It took me a while to read the epigraph, which is a little confusing at first and I’m sorry to have placed it here in all its length, but Keyes had selected an epigraph apt for his fiction and the entirety is worth reading. A man who’s blinded by the light after living in a cave for so long would be grateful for being outside, exposed to the light and the new visions of the new world, would he not? But Plato then asked again if we then should feel more sorry for the one who’s gone back into the cave or the one who’d go out. Where would our sympathies lie?
It is a valid question to ask. The light might blind the cave dweller when he escapes out of the cave for a while, but he will soon have the appreciation of his sight, as shocked as he would be. But we cannot assume his perspective as we are not cave dwellers. Perhaps the caveman will ultimately be more comfortable in the cave and he would be lost in the outside world. This is the case in point of Charlie Gordon.
Flowers for Algernon is just one of those popular books that will always be widely read that you might mistake reading it as a cliché, like how you’d read Eat, Pray, Love or Twilight. But to put those books in the same sentence with Keyes’ masterpiece is sacrilegious because there is a bloody good reason the book has been popular for decades: because it hits hard and is a far, far superior work which is more relevant today than the time of its publication.
Rage, rage into the light
Charlie, an idiot with an IQ just a tad lower than Donald Trump, got a chance of a lifetime when he was picked as a subject to an experiment which might make him smarter than Einstein on drugs. He works as an assistant in a bakery, doing simple work such as deliveries and cleaning, but would not go beyond anything that requires mental strain, such as baking itself.
Charlie, to compare his intelligence, would need to beat a little mouse called Algernon to find his way through a maze, where he would be punished with an electric jolt if he made a mistake. Algernon beat him easily, that is until, Charlie felt the effects of the operation which unlocked his intelligence, then he made that mouse his bitch.
But intelligence comes at a price. His emotional intelligence falls behind his intellectual intelligence, and simple social situations still fall awkwardly to Charlie. His intelligence terrify the people around him, like the bakers he works with to the point that they resent his presence. He slowly outsmarts the professors who he eventually discovers, are just mere men who are fickle about their own reputations.
When the moment arrived to showcase Charlie and Algernon, and how far they had come, Charlie retaliated by releasing Algernon in a room full of academicians, creating a havoc which tarnished the whole project and make them a laughing stock. He also discovered that the experiment was way, way too short to determine the safety to human subjects (that’s him), as Professor Nemur disclosed that after some time, Algernon was known to behave erratically.
Algernon escaped to Charlie’s pockets, and Charlie himself escaped to a cheap apartment with a promiscuous neighbour, Fay, who’d leave her door unlocked. They quickly started a relationship, but Charlie’s not all there. His behaviour follows Algernon’s volatile and potentially violent, though he started off as a nice all around type of guy which made Fay trusted him and drew him into her. But Charlie is on a decline, and he might bring those around him down with him, including those he loves.
The precariousness of science, and the fallibility of man
We read the novels through Charlie’s logs and self-reflection. Charlie, barely literate, started off writing no better than your average first grader, aloof to the fact that he was a butt of the joke to his colleagues, and blindingly trusting anybody who’d give him the time of day. Yet, as he progressively become smarter his language becomes more eloquent, meditative, but cynical. His lost innocence reveals to him the fickleness of human nature and the ambivalence of that vehicle we use for human progress — science.
Perhaps in a similar theme, Crichton’s Jurassic Park comes the closest to the study of the fragility of science, where the consequences of the actions taken without proper time to crystalise will inevitably lead to dire consequences. Oftentimes, there are things scientific studies may have missed which would throw the whole experiment into tatters. In the case of Charlie, science is driven by the prestige and the pressures of funding which demand instant results.
Effectively, this was a death sentence for Charlie without him knowing, so that he was justified to release Algernon out of his cage to wreak havoc. But Algernon was not the only being stuck in his cage. Practically every character had their own manacles which restricted them from who they want to be, or from doing the proper thing. Doctor Nemur, known as a genius in his field, was merely riding the coattails of his wife to procure foundation funding for his research, and he wouldn’t have had his successes if it wasn’t for the pressures from his wife.
Charlie, bound by his lack of intelligence, became more of a prisoner of his newly procured intelligence once he peaked. He could not forego the small creases of imperfections that he detected in the knowledge of the academicians; Promethean men who he had previously worshipped but were not much more than erring and self-serving men. Ironically, the same men who were bound by the ethical boundaries of science were the ones to breach them.
But this begs the question then, as we have heard before whether these types of sacrifices (meaning Charlie, Algernon, animals used for testing) are essential in the advancement of science. Universities would make the study of ethics as mandatory for all students without really answering this question. The argument whether we should use animals for testing will continue to kingdom come and I am not in a position to answer whether they should be used. I would be a hypocrite if I’d say that the use of animal testing is wrong while still using the products borne out of animal testing.
But I am jaded and in the world where human lives are considered cheap, the question is somewhat nihilistic. Even if we can say that the use of these sort of tests for the advancement is unethical, would that really solve anything? Would you rather test out a vaccine which had been tested by animals prior to being implemented to real life human scenarios? I think there is a line to be drawn somewhere, but it will always shift. Aren’t we in this age of AI, the embodiment of Charlie and Algernon, having the tools to become more intelligent to the point that it is innate in our routines, but not knowing where it’s going to lead us to?
And we need to increasingly define these lines. Imagine a world where AI would reign supreme with little regulations. AI, developed mostly by private corporations have a single end in mind, which is profit for its stakeholders. Thus, there will always be a rush of pushing the evolution of artificial intelligence without understanding what happens after the profit is made. Though academia has gotten better in terms of being more strict on human testing (read this awesome article by a neurologist on her reflections of the novel and the plausibility of the experiment), we have not remained committed to protecting the society at large from rash decisions made for the sake of profit.
That dude who’s watching you while you’re doing the deed
There is one other facet that sticks with me in the book that even after having published this review, I really needed to come back to lest I left it unfinished, and that is Charlie’s sexuality. Where intellect is far more advanced than physiology, Charlie had to re-learn what a natural sexual relationship should be like. Even for a normal person, sex is complicated as fuck, so imagine being thrown to the deep end right away. In Charlie’s world, the elusive nature of sex confused his resort to logic and the understanding of facts. Human nature behaves irrationally, especially when it comes to sex.
This is complicated with his newfound memories which had been lying dormant, where he had a complex relationship with his mother and sister who deemed him a threat to their family’s stability. Yet, there are Freudian undertones here where Charlie, not exposed to women would only be able to direct his adolescent sexual urges towards them by impressing them. But this innate desire is countered by his mother’s puritanism which often scolded Charlie for doing “dirty” things that he doesn’t understand, such as putting on his sister’s dress and being punished for it.
This may have been Charlie’s liking pretty things, which may or may not be due to his adolescent sexuality. Yet, he was able to reason that these early memories were related to how he approaches sex now. Though he was aware of that innate desire (professing to Alice that he wanted to use her, though not necessarily making love), he was unable to balance his biological urge, emotions (such as his love for Alice) and his intellect. Arguably, this balance remains unresolved until the end.
As a result of his memories, Charlie, in his intelligent form was averse to the idea of sex, and proceeded with caution. When he participated in the act, this aversion was embodied in his illusions of his idiot self watching the act. His earlier education in sex framed the act as repulsive and violent. Yet, it was only when Charlie was able to let go of his past self, and to some extent, his resort to logic that he was able to commit the act. He took extreme measures by spiting this former self, watching him dumbfounded:
“Then, with a violent effort of the will I was back in the couch with her, aware of her body and my own urgency and potency, and I saw the face against the window, hungrily watching. And I thought to myself, go ahead, you poor bastard — watch, I don’t give a damn any more.
And his eyes went wide as he watched.”
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As I mentioned, we are no different than Charlie or Algernon, endlessly being experimented by powers that be in the excuse of progress. At the time where scientific is constantly skewed by corporations who have vested interests (read the astounding Bad Pharma by Ben Goldacre), we need to proceed with more caution lest we end up as the two heroes of the story. But then, who’s gonna be leaving the flowers for us?
