Flowers For Algernon

Alice is Charlie’s teacher at the Beekman College Center. She plays a vital role in his development. She is one of the first to notice his potential and recommends him for the experimental procedure. Throughout the novel, she remains Charlie’s close friend, supporter, and confidant. She also becomes Charlie’s love interest. Although Charlie and Alice initially fail to connect romantically, Charlie feels she is important and persists. Alice is cautious about starting a relationship with Charlie. She fears that he may become emotionally damaged. Toward the end of the novel, as Charlie declines intellectually, they finally connect.

Alice and Charlie have distinct personalities. In contrast to Charlie’s anger and frustration, Alice is ruled by a sense of fairness and kindness, without being naïve. She helps Charlie to grow. For example, she confronts him about being subject to his arrogance and belittlement. Initially angered, Charlie comes to see that she is right. By the end of the novel, Alice and Charlie experience a full relationship, although brief. In this way, Alice poignantly gives Charlie access to something that he desperately wanted: full, open contact with another human being, however tragically brief that it may be.

While Charlie’s coworkers at the bakery (Mr. Donner, Gimpy, Joe Carp, Frank, and Fanny Birden) have distinct names, they generally function as a unified group. These coworkers provide Charlie with a sense of stability and familiarity. However, some belittle him, laugh at his expense, and bully him, even though Charlie considers them his friends. They abandon him at a party and get him drunk for their amusement, and Gimpy tries to pressure Charlie not to divulge the secret of his theft. Even Mr. Donner, who helped support Charlie after Charlie was abandoned by his immediate family, gives in to pressure from the others. When Charlie’s coworkers become uncomfortable by his transformation after the experiment, Mr. Donner fires Charlie from the bakery.

The bakery crew changes in response to Charlie’s development after the experimental procedure. The loss of his job at the bakery and the people he had considered his friends, despite their mistreatment of him, devastates Charlie. Their importance to him is clear when Charlie tries to return to his job after his intellectual gains begin to fade away.

Fay enters Flowers for Algernon in its final few progress reports. Her time with Charlie triggers a pivotal turning point in his development. Fay is Charlie’s foil. While he is socially isolated, emotionally stunted, intellectually minded, organized, and sexually inexperienced, Fay is an artist. She is a fun-loving partyer with a vivacious sensuality and a lack of care for rules, expectations, and order. Despite their differences, her openness gives Charlie the opportunity to experience a different kind of life, and to break away from the structure of life at the lab. Eventually, Charlie becomes weary of his time with Fay, and she is turned off by his erratic behavior. Still, she plays an important role in helping Charlie understand relationships on a deeper level, which ultimately leads him to his brief relationship with Alice.

Matt is Charlie’s father. There are two versions of Matt: The first exists in Charlie’s dreams and recollections of his past, while the second appears only briefly, when Charlie goes to him at his barbershop. In Charlie’s memories of childhood, Matt appears kind and understanding, at least in comparison to Charlie’s mother, Rose. The conflict between Rose and Matt was a significant part of Charlie’s childhood. While Rose alternated between belittling Charlie and shunning him, Matt pleaded for her to understand Charlie’s intellectual disability. However, Matt also gave in to Rose’s demand to remove Charlie from their home.

Charlie’s memories of Matt are not without pain. This is clear when Charlie visits his father. Seeing him for the first time in many years, Charlie hopes to rekindle a bond. The experience overwhelms him; he cannot handle seeing his father, nor does Matt even recognize him. Charlie as an adult continues to experience a broken and painful relationship with Matt.

Rose is Charlie’s mother. Her attitude toward Charlie is a fundamental part of his psychology and emotional makeup. In Charlie’s memories of childhood, Rose is cruel and shuns him. She is ashamed of his intellectual disability. In his deeper memories, however, Charlie recalls a rarer but kinder Rose. Midway through the novel, Charlie realizes that his motivation to improve himself is indelibly tied to his mother and her insistence, prior to Norma being born, that Charlie could be made “normal.” He realizes that the pain he felt when Rose rejected him is the key to his wanting the procedure. When Charlie reunites with her as an adult, he wants to find someone who accepts him for having improved. Instead, Rose turns out to have declined, shows signs of dementia, and is herself in need of understanding and sympathy.

Norma is Charlie’s sister. She appears as a child in Charlie’s recollections and as an adult in the present time of the novel. In his memories, Norma is vile. Charlie’s memories of his childhood with Norma emphasize how the family dynamics created conflict. Rose loved Norma, who does not have an intellectual disability, and shunned Charlie. When Charlie reunites with Norma as an adult, he imagines that their relationship will still have conflict. He is shocked to discover that Norma is relieved to see him; Rose had told her he was dead, proving that Rose could be cruel to Norma as well as to Charlie. Charlie quickly changes his perception of both Rose and Norma.

Ultimately, Charlie cannot despise Norma. She opens up a path for him to be more understanding and accepting of people at just the moment in which he is on the brink of losing the intellectual and emotional gains he had made since the experimental procedure. Norma had signed off on the procedure. Charlie did not understand that the reason for this was because of Rose’s dementia. Learning that Norma has been caring for his mother changes the way Charlie looks at Norma; he can no longer see her as vile.

Burt is a graduate student working at the Beekman lab. He works under Dr. Strauss and Professor Nemur and on the team conducting the experimental procedure on Algernon and Charlie. Burt is intimately aware of what Charlie is going through. While Nemur and Strauss are under pressure that impacts their relationship with Charlie, Burt is a voice of calm and reason.

He works closely with Charlie after the procedure, running psychological tests, but their later interactions are even more important. Burt tries to help Charlie understand the complexities of human relationships, explaining, for instance, that Nemur is temperamental because his wife, who is connected to wealthy donors supporting his research program, pressures him. Burt serves as a mentor to Charlie, helping to explain tolerance and empathy to him.

Together with Dr. Strauss, Professor Nemur is one of the lead researchers in the Beekman lab. He is driven to produce successful research to the point of fixation. As a result, he fails to see Charlie as a human being. He views him above all as an experimental subject, not that different from the mouse, Algernon. Professor Nemur seems antagonistic, and his character does not really change over the course of the novel.

However, Charlie learns information that casts Professor Nemur in a more nuanced light: Professor Nemur’s well-connected wife pressures him to succeed. Learning this leads Charlie to view Professor Nemur differently, to see him as human and vulnerable. While Professor Nemur and Charlie do not directly come to an understanding, Charlie’s insight helps him to grow and understand Nemur’s motivation. He becomes more empathic.