Finished

Posted by rjhmoore at 4:30 PM 0 comments
Sunday, October 19, 2008

I'm finished with Flowers For Algernon. Surprisingly it was a quick read; perhaps because it was so good. I love the way Daniel Keyes writes it. It is a series of progress reports written by Charlie Gordon, the main character. I've essentially killed two birds with one stone by reading this book. I chose it for my research paper for AP psychology because it obviously hat to do with the mind, but also with experimentation ethics.

You know, if you've read the book, that the doctors and experimenters got permission, not only from Charlie, but Charlie's teacher (at the adult learning center) and Charlie's sister. Now here are the facts: Charlie is in no fit condition to decide whether or not he should put himself under the experimental knife because he can not fully understand all of the risks. Charlie's teacher cannot decide because she is in no way related to Charlie and is not completely knowledgeable on the subject. Charlie's sister has no idea what they plan to do to Charlie either and she hasn't seen her brother in almost twenty years, so who is she to decide? Another question is, should the scientists really be conducting human experiments yet? They themselves still don't know all of the potential outcomes and in the end (when Charlie is a genius), Charlie has to figure it out for them, and he does. These are just some points I might bring up in my paper, which I will probably ask you, Ms. Cassell, to read/proofread if you don't mind.