I think that the use of power in the book, Flowers for Algernon, is a key element used in the story. The doctor, Nemur, used his power, which was smartness, over Charlie to influence him in using their experiment to test the cure for mental retardation. Charlie followed and believed everything Nemur said because he was smarter than him and trusted his authority and the power that he had towards people. When Charlie began to progress and be smarter, he soon had the power over other people. His smartness made him a drag to be around because he could always use it to make people feel bad or to get his point across too others. As the book continued, it described how Charlie started to have power over his scientists. He had the authority and could control when he wanted the tests to be ran and he himself started to become more authoritative than Nemur. Charlie realizes he should not be treated as a rat or a testing subject. As Charlie becomes even more smarter than the people around him, Nemur starts to realize that Charlie deserves more respect because he is too a human being like everyone else who lives on this planet.
I agree with you that after Charlie's operation he does not know how to act because he was never taught as a child because he would have not comprehended it. I also agree with you on the fact that while he is getting smarter the people that he a
ReplyDeletethought were his friends now do not understand what is happening to him and they treat him as an outsider just as they had before. Now that we're almost done with the book we see that Charlie has never been what he wanted to be, normal before he was on the dumb side of the spectrum and now he is on the complete other side smarter than any one else in the world and he is treated different just like he was before the only difference now is that he recognizes that they are treating him in that different matter.
I do agree that Dr. Numer used his power over him, but I don’t think it was to make Charlie do the testing and even the experiment. Dr. Numer’s power was imposed onto him by Charlie him self, by him thinking themselves more then what the truly are. They are just men not heroes like Charlie thought. Charlie didn’t know that he had any power at the peek of his intelligent so he did not know that he was intimidating people. He didn’t gain the power to take his tests until after he left the conference and begin to loose his power by him losing his smartness due to the Algernon Gordon effect. I agree that at the end of charlies life he was treated like more of a person and less of a rat.
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