- The end of Flowers for Algernon.
- The analogy about the keyhole... It's not fair.
Charlie: I have often reread my progress reports and seen the illiteracy, the childish naiveté, the mind of low intelligence peering from a dark room, through a keyhole, at the dazzling light outside. I see that even in my dullness that I knew I was inferior, and that other people had something I lacked - something denied me. In my mental blindness, I thought it was somehow connected to the ability to read and write, and I was sure that if I could get those skills I would automatically have intelligence too.
- Charlie's Nov. 16th entry near the end (July 25th in the short story):
- Please... please... dont let me forget how to reed and rite...
- This troper only read the short story version, but the exact moment when Charlie's writing shows his decline, and he realizes what is happening to him reduced her to tears. Ditto for every time he mentions his coworkers in a positive light.
- Pretty much every memory from Charlie's childhood.
- The ending. This troper is a big believer in karma in stories. When a character, regardless of their track record, does something inherently wrong, he or she should be punished accordingly. Charlie, who'd been basically slapped around like a bitch for the entire novel, lost the intelligence he'd wanted so badly, and was on his way to the mental institution he swore he'd never go to. The real kick in the balls is he did nothing to deserve this. He was a mentally retarded man who yearned to be "normal", and apparently that was too much to ask. Apparently that justified putting him through hell.
- Knowing the final fate of Charlie, given that Algernon died, you know what's bound to happen...
- That never convinced me. Algernon let himself die — he went into depression, refused to eat, wounded himself. Charlie, on the other hand, was badly depressed for a time but snapped out of it thanks to his friends and his work. He won't die because he's a human being and not just a guinea pig — which is what he'd been fighting for. This also means that the version of the book described in the next entry is awesome, but only an interpretation nonetheless.
- This Troper read a special written version of the book that was suppose to look as if the Progress Reports were actually written by Charlie. The chicken scratch scrawl from the start of the book slowly improved as the story progressed, and Charlie's spelling also improved as well. But what really got me in the end was the last sentence.
"p.p.s. please if you get a chanse put some flowrs on Algernons grave in thebakyard..."
At the end of the sentence, a long, messy line trailed off of the "D" and moved off of the page, indicating that
Charlie died while he was writing his last request, which was for someone to simply remember the simple pet rat who was the only thing that he could relate to.
