64 pages • 2 hours read
Daniel KeyesFlowers For Algernon
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1966A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Progress Reports 14-15Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Progress Report 14 Summary
The newspapers widely report Charlie’s escape with Algernon, who has begun to act erratic. After his family is questioned by a reporter, Charlie learns the address of his mother and sister Norma. Charlie looks at a photo of them and recalls how his mother was affectionate with Norma while rejecting him. He also remembers his parents fighting about this. Charlie does not go home. Instead, he lays low at a hotel and rents an apartment. He meets his neighbor, Fay Lillman, a free-spirited artist who enjoys drinking and dancing. Charlie is immediately struck by how sexually attracted he is to Fay.
Charlie tracks down his father Matt, who has his own barbershop in the Bronx. He wants to introduce himself to his father, who does not recognize him. Matt shaves him and Charlie remembers the night his mother forced Matt to take Charlie out of their home to live with his Uncle Herman. Charlie nearly collapses at the memory. He leaves the barbershop without ever revealing who he is.
One night, Fay comes to Charlie’s apartment after an argument with another man. She and Charlie nearly have sex, but he stops after seeing a vision of his younger self watching. Fay stays over and the two of them get drunk. The next morning, she tells Charlie that while he was drunk he regressed to a child-like state, which she found hilarious. Charlie wanders around the city. In a diner, he sees a young man with an intellectual disability being ridiculed for dropping dishes. Charlie screams at the onlookers, “He’s a human being!” (199). He remembers how others had similarly made fun of him in his past.
Charlie decides to return to the lab and devote himself to working on increasing the intelligence of people with intellectual disabilities. He also goes to see Alice, who has been worried about him since his disappearance. He divulges his romantic feelings to Alice, who is both flattered and unsettled. Charlie comes up with the idea of trying to have sex with Alice while imagining she is Fay in order to trick the hallucination of his younger self. The plan fails. Alice consoles Charlie and explains he has made some progress, but he leaves upset. He goes home and finds Fay in her apartment. They drink and have sex, even though Charlie sees the younger version of himself watching. Their relationship continues, and Charlie stops seeing the hallucination. Charlie begins to feel burnt out from all the time he and Fay spend going out dancing and partying.
Progress Report 15 Summary
Charlie returns to the lab, although Nemur is annoyed because Charlie approached the Wellberg Foundation and said he would only return if allowed to work on his independent research. The team notices that Algernon has forgotten what he had learned and is acting erratically. While touring the lab, Charlie is told that if Algernon dies, he will be incinerated. Charlie refuses to accept this plan and insists that he be allowed to bury Algernon if he dies. Charlie learns that the team and Norma had discussed his fate. Should the operation fail and he cannot care for himself, Charlie will return to the Warren State Home and Training School rather than work at the bakery. Watching Algernon’s decline, Charlie knows that the operation may also be failing him.
Progress Reports 14-15 Analysis
Charlie’s time hiding out from the lab team is in some ways productive. The newspapers’ reporting of his disappearance leads both to concrete information about how to locate his family as well as to a flood of memories about his past. The memories deepen the pain he feels, as he recalls his mother Rose favoring his sister Norma. Possibly for this reason, Charlie decides to track down his father first. Even though he recalls his father being more understanding, the meeting is disastrous. The failed reunion is a sign that Charlie still needs to grow before he’s ready to contact family.
His time hiding is an experiment; Charlie tries to grow as a person by turning away from his intellectual side. Charlie’ acquaintance with Fay, who has a radically different lifestyle from him, is a catalyst for that growth. Her openness and sensuality inspire the sexual urges Charlie has been trying to grapple with. Yet he is not ready to act on these feelings, which the reader sees when he again fails to connect with Alice. Still, Charlie’s time with Fay, focused on drinking, joking, and dancing, spurs a change in his character.
Even that change soon grows wearying, however. When Charlie sees the man with an intellectual disability being ridiculed, it brings about yet another turning point. At that moment, he matures, realizing that he has been focused on himself, while he could be working to help others. Charlie flings himself into his research. Still, there is a growing sense that he is doomed as he watches Algernon’s intellectual ability decline. His sense of doom intensifies when he learns of the plan for his return to the Warren State Home for people with intellectual disabilities. Learning the existence of this plan causes Charlie to reflect on his own fate.
The implications of the experiment become more complex. It is unclear whether the gains were worth it, since Charlie will decline—and worse, is aware of his decline. On the one hand, Charlie experienced both emotional and intellectual growth and the awakening of his romantic and sexual feelings. On the other, he knows that he will lose them. While this may seem to clarify that the experiment was not worth it, there is also the question of whether Charlie’s situation is so different from the lives of people who don’t undergo brain-enhancing surgery. We live knowing we will die and that we will lose our intellectual ability, our memory, our selfhood. Keyes implies these existential questions without providing answers. He challenges the reader to ponder them.
