A review by nb_leftist
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

challenging dark emotional sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

Absolutely rife with ableism. The beginning is pretty rough in that regard, and the ending slowly starts to return to it. There is one part which is quite racist towards Asian people as it describes yellowface and such. All of this is pretty much to be expected from a book written in the 50s. Other than that though it does a really good job of portraying a lot of ableism in our society. There are parts that I am surprised were written in the 50s as they could have been written today. Keyes discusses topics of dehumanization of people who are disabled, how Charlie is considered only human when he is "intelligent". It also talks about the uselessness of IQ testing and discusses early arguments about whether it is a valid form of measuring intelligence. It talks about the "de-sexualization" of people with disabilities; how people with disabilities are not allowed to be sexual. I do also think that having read a bunch of Freud right before reading this book allowed me to extract much more of value as it revolves around the practice of psychology and specifically psycho-analysis and freudian stages of psychosexual development. Other types of psycho-therapy and other psychological theories are left out, but once again, it's a book from the 50s, not exactly expecting much else, in other words, it is definitely an interesting exhibition of one of the sides of the debate in psychology during the time of publishing.

I would say that the ending is quite disappointing. Throughout the book Charlie discusses his anger at Professor Nemur refusing to admit his humanity pre-op but when he goes to see his family, both his mother and his sister talk about him as if he wasn't a human and finally he's "here", or that Norma is so happy to "finally have a brother", and his reaction is not anger or sadness but is instead "fulfilled", even though certainly he would have had a different reaction. 

I think this made sense, I usually try not to write reviews very quickly after finishing the book as it allows my thoughts to be fresh and not disappear in an ADHD wipe (lmao), so this might not make a ton of organizational sense but it is the order of my thoughts within 5-10 minutes after finishing the book.
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