Post Seven: Close Focus Reading

Close Focused Reading:

For my close focused reading I chose to write on “Flowers for Algernon,” post 9 (April 20) and 11 (April 21):

“I didn't know what to do or where to turn. Everyone was looking at me and laughing and I felt naked. I wanted to hide. I ran outside and I threw up. Then I walked home. It's a funny thing I never knew that Joe and Frank and the others liked to have me around all the time to make fun of me. Now I know what it means when they say, "to pull a Charlie Gordon. "I'm ashamed.”

-Charlie

The same thing is being illustrated in this text from Charlie’s 10^th post. Because the experiment was to help increase his intelligence, he now puts two-and-two together that Joe and Frank were only out to embarrass him and were amused by it. Before Charlie could never understand what was going on, therefore it didn’t affect him. Now, its hurtful, rude, and makes him upset when they do these kinds of things. In this section he likes to be around Ellen, but Ellen is too into being “cool” to realize her feelings for him.  It’s a shame to see how people treat others, just because they are dumb and don’t understand things or have as good as an IQ as you. Making fun of someone for doing something stupid is shameful and rude. Charlie should be upset and offended by the way these two boys have been treating him. Now its time for him to show them up, by all the progress he makes.

           

 “I think it's a good thing about finding out how everybody laughs at me. I thought about it a lot. It's because I'm so dumb and I don't even know when I'm doing something dumb. People think it's funny when a dumb person can't do things the same way they can.” 

-Charlie 

Through out the beginning Charlie was always getting picked on and made fun of by other employees. Dr. Strauss decides to run an experiment on him to see if he can increase Charlie’s IQ level.  I chose this section of the story because it is when Charlie realizes how people really feel about him, and he actually understands it now. I’m going to do my best to explain what I think each sentence means, although the story was easy to read and understand, it is kind of confusing for me to know if I actually understand what he is saying.

At first when he mentions that he thinks it’s a good thing that he can understand why he gets laughed at, I think he feels like he is finely happy to know the real reason they are laughing and not feel dumb for not knowing. Even though being laughed at is hurtful and demeaning to him he would rather understand the reason behind it, than to be clueless. He finally realizes that they were never his friends and didn’t respect him. What the other employees didn’t know was that Charlie was making an incredible come back and was becoming smarter everyday.

           

            In conclusion, this story is very inspiring and enlightening to me, I love how he works hard to become smarter, and as you read you can see his progress. I enjoyed reading it, and there are multiple parts in the story that I could pick out to close read, just because there is so much going on and a lot of good points are made throughout the story.