Charlie’s intelligence is meant to better his life, but did the end effect hold up as all it was supposed to be? In the story Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes, Charlie’s life is lacking socially because those around him dislike him for seemingly no reason at all. He assumes that the missing link in his social life is his intelligence, but when he takes the operation to increase his IQ, it has the adverse effect of what was intended. Charlie’s operation in Flowers for Algernon is mostly negative for his life experience due to humanity’s innate rejection of change and those different from themselves, which Charlie is in every category after the operation.

One main change made to Charlie’s life because of his operation is the loss of his friends, and the resulting loneliness as an effect of it. After the effects of Charlie’s operation take place, he thinks that people will like him due to his newfound intellect and ability to talk fluently, but it had the opposite effect. People naturally reject any type of change, be it negative or positive, so even though the main character flaw they made fun of was “fixed”, their dislike for Charlie remained. His co-workers viewed his intelligence as unnatural, or as a sort of forbidden fruit, as according to Fanny, which drove them away from becoming friends with him. This led to Charlie lacking anybody to talk to, which would make anybody unreasonably lonely. Charlie’s intelligence removed his friends and his work from his already quite lonely life.

Charlie gains the knowledge necessary to improve his workplace, but he’s missing the ability to understand the rewards he deserves to reap from it. Soon after Charlie’s operation, he suggests a new layout of the machines in his workplace that would save them hundreds of thousands of dollars, but he only got a small raise as a part of it. He has an absurd amount of intelligence, but a lack of wisdom at the time, so he could easily get taken advantage of by others, such as the owner of his workplace. Charlie’s quality of life decreased as a result of this because he could’ve used the money from it in order to improve his living conditions and afford more luxuries around him. Even though Charlie lost so much from the operation, some people would disagree that it was mostly negative.

Other readers might disagree with the idea that Charlie’s operation was a detriment to his quality of life, but I disagree. Readers could point out upsides such as even though he lost some of his friends, he realized the fake friends around him and was able to eliminate them from his environment. Although this is true, an alternate detrimental effect that greatly outweighs this is how this internally affects Charlie, which is that, instead of realizing that the people who laugh at him for his disability are untrue friends, he thinks that an extreme of self-deprecation is just whatever’s necessary to make friends. This leads to him opening himself to the possibility of having a much more toxic friend group than he had even before the operation.

The final lasting effect the operation has in Charlie’s life is the knowledge that everything he ever wanted was in his grasp, but it slipped right out of his fingers. In the last page of Flowers for Algernon we can see that Charlie states that he wants to be remembered as the intelligent version of himself those around him came to know, instead of the less intelligent version of him near the end and beginning of the story. Charlie believes that the version of him after the operation is superior to that of him before, and we can therefore assume that he feels worthless if he’s unable to understand the feats he previously accomplished. Charlie feels as if losing his intelligence makes him an inferior person to what he was before.

The operation was meant to increase Charlie’s intelligence and help him in his life, but in actuality it ended up having the opposite effect. Charlie’s idea of an intelligent version of him would have more friends, a better workplace, and new relationships, but people’s resistance to change and those unlike themselves ruin his perfect world. This story teaches us that no matter how positive a trait may seem, it still could be negative in the eyes of those around you if you’re still different from them. No matter how good you are at something, society will find a way to put you down for it.