“Flowers for Algernon”Name:Period:

Close Reading Exercise

Read the entries for May 15, May 18, and May 20 on pages 235-238.

General Understanding:

  1. How have Charlie’s opinions of his doctors changed?______
  2. What has happened in his relationship with Miss Kinnian? ______

Key Details:

  1. What evidence from the text supports Charlie’s shifting perspective? ______

Vocabulary:

  1. Charlie thinks, “Even a feeble-minded man wants to be like other men.” What does he mean by “feeble-minded?”

______

  1. “I felt sick inside as I looked at his dull, vacuous smile, the wide, bright eyes of a child, uncertain but eager to please.” Why does the author use the word “vacuous” to describe the boy’s smile? ______
  2. Why does the author contrast the word “vacuous” with the words “wide, bright eyes of a child…eager to please”? ______
  3. Why does he put the word “uncertain” in the middle? ______

Structure/Author’s Craft:

  1. How does the May 20th entry reflect a shift in the author’s craft (diction)? ______
  2. Why does the author choose to have the sentences “Even a feeble-minded man wants to be like other men” and “A child may not know how to feed itself, or what to eat, yet it knows of hunger” stand alone as individual paragraphs?

______

“Flowers for Algernon”

Close Reading Exercise

Author’s Purpose:

  1. “How strange it is that people of honest feelings and sensibility, who would not take advantage of a man born without arms or legs or eyes—how such people think nothing of abusing a man born with low intelligence.”

What is Keyes saying about the nature of mankind in general? ______

  1. Whatpart of the passage does Keyes intend to connect with the line, “There are so many doors to open”?______

Intertextual Connections

Consider the following quotation from the Old Testament book of Proverbs:

“Pridegoes before destructionand a haughty spirit beforea fall.”

  1. How would Charlie’s interpretation of this quotation change after each of the three journal entries? ______
  1. At the very end of the May 20 passage, Charlie reflects, “There is so much that might be done with this technique. If I could be made into a genius, what about thousands of others like myself? What fantastic levels might be achieved by using this technique on normal people? on geniuses? There are so many doors to open. I am impatient to begin.”

What logical consequences would ensue for society if this surgical procedure were successful and became commonplace. ______