For The ones Flower For Algernon what were you thinking while reading and were you waiting for such end?
Do you think dumb persons are meant to stay dumb?Do actual dumb person feel what’s happening around him?
I’v just finished it and i guess it’s one of the books that I liked the most, it’s deep , light and sad.
I think it made me impersonate the character and reconsider my acts toward any persons who i’v been harsh to just because he didn’t understand the situation quickly.
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by DoughnutRadiant6956
5 Comments
>For The ones Flower For Algernon what were you thinking while reading and were you waiting for such end?
I’m taking Psych currently, I think it was realistic but I did not have any expectations of the ending.
>Do you think dumb persons are meant to stay dumb?Do actual dumb person feel what’s happening around him?
No. It depends. Some people heal, some don’t, some stay in between. This depends on factors like genetics, how they are raised and more. Some do feel what’s happening, some don’t, it depends on what mental illness or development problems they have.
>I think it made me impersonate the character and reconsider my acts toward any persons who i’v been harsh to just because he didn’t understand the situation quickly.
I felt it was realistic. My exposure to people with mental illness made me more empathetic.
Flowers for Algernon, resonates with the reader, because intelligence functions as an allegory, for life itself.
We all experience growing stronger, becoming adults, till we understand at our heighth, that from here we will slowly decay, become feeble, and die in the end.
Is it possible that English is not your first language? “Dumb” is the equivalence of “stupid, foolish,” and, in older uses, “mute,” but it’s not a synonym for what is now called developmental delay or developmental disability, and used to be called retardation at the time the book was written.
Charlie isn’t a dumb guy, he’s disabled. So questions about whether a disabled person is “meant to stay” disabled– meant by whom? – or if they know they’re disabled should be phrased that way. And then they answer themselves.
I think that is the thing that resonated with me the most, that a disabled person doesn’t need to be fixed, they are worthy of love and joy as much as anyone else.
The book resonated with me on a personal level, because I have a mental illness, and although my intellect is intact and I was always considered a smart person, I did feel a lot of discrimination coming from my mother, she would often tell me “people like you can’t do this, people like you shouldn’t do that, someone with your disease needs to take care with…”. Or she would dismiss things I said as me being delusional, when I was just remembering something that did happen but that she didn’t remember. And that feeling of your parents not accepting you for who you are was really difficult for me. And that’s how I was interpreting the book, a young man with disability who is just wholesome the way he is and doesn’t need changing.
I read the play when I was 12 and I totally got it, it made a profound effect on me as a young boy in an achievement driven academic school.