flowers for algernon
I finally read Flowers for Algernon. Now I understand why I kept putting off reading the book. It's a really sad book. One question that I kept thinking about: is it true that the smarter you are, the more insufferable you become?
I think the answer is no. There are other ways to be smart in the world. What happened to Charlie wasn't just about getting smarter - it was also about his emotional growth. Like internally he was still a child with all those scars and trauma that were forgotten. But his body remembered.
The thing about Charlie is that for so much of his life, things were out of his control. He couldn't understand what was going around him, no matter how much people tried to explain, it was simply out of his reach. Which left him lonely. So when he finally got what he wanted, he thought that people would accept him and he would belong.
"The rotten thing is that all of the pleasure is gone because the others resent me. In a way, I can't blame them. They don't understand what has happened to me, and I can't tell them. People are not proud of me the way I expected - not at all."
But nope! People became wary and even more distant towards him. In a lot of ways, his quality of life actually got worse after the experiment.
The smarter he got, the harder it became for him to talk to people, which fed into his self-centeredness because no one really understood what was going on with Charlie. He got impatient with people, started assuming what they were thinking and feeling.
"Oh, how insufferable you've become. How do you know what I feel? You take liberties with other people's minds. You can't tell how I feel or what I feel or why I feel"
The thing is, it wasn't them that was the issue. It's just that Charlie had become this genius, and his intellect had grown so fast that others couldn't keep up. He had swung from one extreme to another - from someone with an IQ below 70 to someone that knew multiple languages and different domains of knowledge.
"I've discovered that nobody cares about Charlie Gordon, whether he's a moron or a genius. So what difference does it make?"
And you know what's sad? I think Charlie started seeing qualities like being open and forgiving, as characteristics of his "stupid" past self. Like being sincere was something to be ashamed of. So he stopped making an effort to get to know people - to ask, to listen, or even just giving them a chance. He wasn't interested in their lives if they weren't at his level. And the more isolated he became, the worse his social skills got, and yeah - he became an asshole.
But here's why I think this isn't the only way to be smart: if Charlie had a more supportive childhood, if people/society had seen him as a person worthy of time and attention, maybe things would have been different.
I think that's kind of the point of the book - we're all subject to the patterns we know. Breaking out of those cycles isn't just about knowing better, he needed to have actually experienced better. Charlie knew all about what makes a good life intellectually - he even talks about how being smart is meaningless without love.
"Intelligence without the ability to give and receive affection leads to mental and moral breakdown, to neurosis, and possibly even psychosis. And I say that the mind absorbed in and involved in itself as a self-centered end, to the exclusion of human relationships, can only lead to violence and pain."
As much as Charlie tried to practice loving someone, his body kept remembering all those old dangers and pains from childhood. He kept treating his past self as this enemy to be fought against, but really, past Charlie and post-experiment Charlie were the same person. And constantly treating yourself as the enemy? Not only is it exhausting, it doesn't work.
So yeah, Charlie became insufferable because that was all he knew - he was repeating patterns he internalized as a child. In a different world, I think Charlie could have held onto his compassion and empathy even as he got smarter.