Charlie is a simple man. he is happy with his job at a bakery owned by a family friend, and he enjoys learning to read and write in his special classes. He has friends and hobbies. He becomes selected for this experimental operation, due to his kind nature and his eagerness to learn, and permission for him to take part is given by his sister, who he hasn't had contact with him since he was a child. After the operation, slowly Charlie gets smarter and smarter, and unravels his past, and he can start to make sense of the memories he has from before the operation, and starts to see his life in a new light.Suddenly he can his experiences from the past in a new perspective, and he can work out peoples motives for their actions. He can see how and why his mother struggled to raise a challenging child, and why his sister lost her temper with him growing up. This story is told expertly, and avoids any cliches or pitfalls, which lend themselves to this sort of tale. This story has become almost cliche, and a staple of sitcoms (Lets make the stupid character smart ha ha ha). The two that I can remember are It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and the Simpsons.
None can tell the story as well as the source material. We read the story through Charlie's "Progress Reports" which he has to complete and hand in to the lab. So the noticeable thing is that at the start, Charlie can't spell or use punctuation. Slowly but surely he picks up words and grammar, and quickly he is writing like a true novelist. This is nice stylistic touch and I found it satisfying to notice the small subtle changes to Charlie's writing as he grew more and more clever. Also, obviously we aren't getting the full story when Charlie isn't the full ticket, so it's an obvious example of an Unreliable Narrator
The story has a nice way of jumping around in time and playing with the focus. Charlie has a lot to sort out in head. He starts off with the present, and watches his friends and sees how they really are. he leaves his job as a janitor at the Bakery and becomes a scholar. Then Charlie looks at his past, as memories from childhood start to come back to him, and he can see the true nature of how his mother and father acted, and how his childhood really was. Charlie has to figure out his whole life up until now, and goes through everything that occurs to him. It's an almost enviable experience, to be able to go through the past with a fresh set of eyes and whole new perspective. Many of us have our memories set in stone, with no flexibility for a new perspective or analysis. After Charlie works out his past, he sets his sight on his future. He studies Algernon, the mouse who went through the operation before Charlie, and figures out his future. It works well, and in this 200 page novel we get a sense of Charlie's whole life.
There's a big theme of how society treats mentally challenged people. This book was written in the 50's so obviously life has changed since then, but maybe some points are still relevant. Charlie is frustrated that his is a test subject, and the professors talk about him like he is their success story - he keeps reminding them he is, and always has been a human being. Charlie then visits a care home, where the most important thing seems to be the number of patients and keeping things tidy. It's a nice humanistic approach. The other big theme is obviously happiness, and it's relationship to intelligence. Are clever people really happier, or, as is often thought, are they more miserable for their cleverness? The answer isn't clear cut in this book. Sometimes Charlie yearns for the life he used to have, whre he believed his friends loved him and he had a regular job, but when he is presented with the idea of going back he becomes terrified at the prospect. Don't go into this book expecting the story to be the cliche of a man gets smarter and only gets more miserable.
There is a bit more to it than just getting smarter. There's a psychological aspect to it, and a bit of a darker story lurking here. I don't want to give it away, but Charlie start to feel at times that he's not completely alone, and he can't completely escape the man that existed before his operation
It was censored in the past and banned from schools, but it seemed pretty tame to me. Charlie deals with learning about sex, but it isn't overly graphic, and surely something most of us have been through.
I liked this book, and although the story these days has been everywhere, it still wasn't as straight forward as I expected. I'd recommend this one, and I'd hope in years to come it becomes widely recognised for the classic it deserves to be.
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