Flowers for Algernon: Progress Report 16 Summary & Analysis

This visit is tragically ironic, as genius-Charlie surveys the place that will probably become his home once he regresses. The home at least seems like a nice, nurturing place—unlike many “asylums” for the mentally ill or disabled.

Keyes again brings up the idea that there might be a negative correlation between intelligence and kindness. The intelligent characters in the novel seem overworked, miserable, and selfish, while the mentally challenged patients respect and take care of each other.

Charlie now recognizes the virtue of devoting oneself to other people, and seems to realize that intelligence has nothing to do with moral goodness or strength.

Charlie used to accept and even admire Fay’s sensuality and anti-intellectualism as her greatest asset, but now he ridicules her. Charlie is working hard on research that will potentially benefit other people, but in his personal relationships he seems to be growing arrogant and withdrawn again.

Charlie has been so egocentric that he’s been unable to imagine any interactions between his female friends—as far as he’s concerned, Fay and Alice are real only insofar as they interact with him. Seeing Fay and Alice interact with each other reminds Charlie that he’s not the center of the universe.

Charlie seems more perceptive than usual: he’s always been good at reading other people, but even so, his attentiveness to Alice’s jealousy seems like a sign of his increased emotional intelligence. The question, then, is whether or not he’ll lose the wisdom he’s gained when he loses his intellect.

The paradox of Charlie’s intelligence (and, one might say, of power in general) is that he can’t enjoy it, because he spends too much time trying to preserve it. It’s also ironic that Charlie seems to be mentally deteriorating even as he studies mental deterioration.

Charlie has moved past his sensual phase: instead of hanging out with Fay, he throws himself into his research. While it’s possible to read this decision as a moral regression (i.e., Charlie’s cutting himself off from other people), it’s actually the case that Charlie is becoming closer to his “fellow men.” As he says here, he’s conducting research in order to help other people as much as himself.

Charlie has made a great deal of moral progress, even in the time since his last progress report. The fact that Fay has essentially left Charlie for a dancer has larger significance, suggesting that there is a world of physicality and interpersonal connection that is just as important or powerful as intellectual genius like Charlie’s.

In this chapter Keyes gives us a sense for the ins and outs of academic research (Keyes spent most of his adulthood working at various colleges and universities, so he knows what he’s talking about). Keyes is unflinching in his critique of the pettiness and small-mindedness of scientists. While Charlie seems at least partly motivated by an abstract desire to help the human race, his colleagues at the Foundation seem entirely motivated by their selfish desire for fame.

Here, the two sides of the argument come head-to-head. Nemur is an arrogant narcissist, but so is Charlie. Charlie is right to call out his former mentor, but he’s also wrong to take such great pleasure in doing so. All this also continues Keyes’ commentary on intellect vs. morality. At the home for the disabled everyone was kind and caring to each other, but this gathering of intellectuals is full of jealousy and spite.

Charlie reveals the extent of his progress as a moral agent. Previously, he’d measured success in the narrowest, most personal terms. Now, he’s talking in terms of human dignity and human happiness—terms that seem more or less foreign to someone like Professor Nemur.

In a way, Charlie has been “looking in the mirror” ever since he became a genius. He’s examined his own psyche—his traumatic childhood, and his feelings of ambition and insecurity. Here, Charlie finally states the plain truth: he hates his inner child and resents the fact that he had such a tragic childhood. This is also an important step forward, as Charlie admits to himself that he’s a narcissist. As we’ve already seen, the first step to finding a solution is admitting there’s a problem.

It’s now clear that Charlie has become cut off from Fay’s world of sensual innocence. Instead, he devotes himself to intellectual endeavors, motivated not by his own arrogance (as he was before) so much as an abstract sense of right and wrong.

This is the only passage in the book that’s not presented as an entry from Charlie’s progress report,—signaling that this is a particularly important chapter in the novel. Charlie has now officially discovered and confronted his fate: he’s doomed to lose his intelligence and quickly regress.

Although Charlie has learned his fate, it’s not clear if he’s accepted it. At any rate, Charlie seems genuinely apologetic to Nemur. Perhaps the nearness of his own “mortality” is making Charlie more grateful and forgiving..

As Charlie faces the tragic truth that he’s going to lose his intelligence, he turns to Alice for love and comfort. Alice has been an important influence on Charlie’s moral and intellectual development from the very beginning, so, it makes sense that he would turn to Alice now.

Charlie’s mental state is both selfish (he wants to hold on to his brains) and magnanimous. It would be easy to imagine Charlie blaming Strauss and Nemur for his suffering, and yet Charlie refrains from blaming anyone. He’s taken the mature path of accepting that things are the way they are, and all he can do is try his best with what he has.

Even after he give up all hope of preserving his intelligence, Charlie doesn’t stop his research. This proves that Charlie really is motivated by a desire to help other people: even if he can’t save his own mind, he can still improve the minds of others.

Algernon’s death prefigures the “intellectual death” that awaits Charlie, and adds more tragic foreshadowing to the novel.

Charlie is weeping for his own impending fate as well as for Algernon, but it’s also clear that he genuinely loved and empathized with Algernon, and so his tears are far from purely selfish.

Whether he’s ready for the psychological strain or not, Charlie is running out of time to visit his mother and reconcile himself with his past.

This is the climactic chapter of the book: the moment in which Charlie confronts the cause of his sadness and sexual anxiety, and the source of his feelings of ambition and inadequacy.

The reunion starts on an uncertain note. Merely being around his mother is enough to make Charlie regress from a genius to a child—he can barely speak. It’s telling that Rose (unlike Matt) recognizes Charlie right away: even if she was cruel to her son, she spent more time thinking about him than anyone else, and, it would seem, continues to think about him decades later.

Charlie is so desperate to see his mother—so desperate for a moment of catharsis—that he’s willing to break into her house. This scene also has some symbolic resonance: one could say that Charlie is ”smashing the mirror,” i.e., rejecting the narcissism and rigorous self-contemplation he’s been engaged in for so many pages.

In this important scene, Rose’s obsession with taking care of Charlie comes across as stubborn and oddly childish—even after Charlie tells her that he’s become a genius, she refuses to treat him any differently. We realize that Rose’s obsession with taking care of Charlie was as much a mark of her own neuroses and insecurities as it was a mark of Charlie’s mental disability.

Slowly, we realize what’s going on. Ironically, Rose, not Charlie, is now the one with a mental disability: she has dementia, and doesn’t really understand what’s going on (even though she’s read about Charlie’s operation at some point). Strangely, the fact that Rose has dementia clarifies the kind of person she is. Even after she loses her mind, she maintains her strong desire to be perceived as “normal.” Rose is the embodiment of the Freudian “superego”: her first question to herself is always, “What will other people think?” Previously, Charlie was afraid of his mother, but now, her obsession with public appearances comes across as pathetic and rather sad.

It’s a sign of Charlie’s perceptiveness—and his pride—that he presents his study as proof that he turned out to be important. Charlie knows that Rose cares about other people’s opinions, and now he’s giving her concrete proof that he turned out to be successful.

In Charlie’s memories, Norma came across as a mean, self-absorbed girl. But it’s now clear that this was mostly the result of a young girl growing up in a difficult environment, and she seems to have changed in her maturity.

Even if Charlie can’t quite confront his mother, he gets some much-needed closure with his sister. By confessing her feelings of resentment for Charlie, Norma proves that she wants a good relationship with her brother. One mark of Norma and Charlie’s kinship is that they both suffer from a strong sense of guilt and shame: Charlie because of his mother’s cruelty and the belief that his disability hurt his family, and Norma because of her own cruelty.

It’s a mark of Charlie’s progress in this scene that when Rose shouts, “Dirty mind!” he isn’t the least bit frightened. By confronting the source of his problem—his domineering mother—Charlie gains more control over his own emotions. In Freudian terms, this is essentially Charlie resolving his “Oedipal complex,” and moving past his sexual neuroses regarding his mother so that he can be in a healthy relationship with another woman. Another sign of Charlie’s new maturity is that he chooses not to tell Norma about his memory of Rose waving the knife. It’s subtle and ironic that Charlie recognizes that—sometimes, anyway—ignorance is bliss.

It’s hard to gauge Charlie’s behavior in this chapter. He clearly wants a resolution with his family, and yet he doesn’t seem to want a real relationship with them. Perhaps the reason that he chooses to leave Norma so quickly is that he doesn’t want to hurt her further down the line: but it could also be that he’s essentially using them as “objects” (like he did with Fay) to cure his psychological problems. Even though Charlie has confronted the source of his trauma, he continues to hallucinate himself as a little boy: a sign of his impending regression to a childlike state.