Episode: 4479
Title: HPR4479: Who is the Algernon for Whom are the Flowers?
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4479/hpr4479.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-26 01:05:40

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4479 for Thursday 2 October 2025.
Today's show is entitled, Who is the Algernon for Whom are the Flowers?
It is hosted by Semla's Enseit-Pluith and is about 22 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is, the original short story, asterisk attention asterisk, full of revelations
of the plot spoilers.
Hi, dear members of Hacker Public Radio.
Who is the Algernon for Whom are the Flowers?
I just recently, hours ago, discovered.
Because, I did not read or list them to any spoiler that you are going to have here,
and they will say at the moment, we will have so you can pause if you want.
What is it? What are you talking about?
Flowers for Algernon? Is it short? Short, short science fiction, the history.
History no, story.
Originally that, but was later developed also years later as another.
I came to this story because I heard the title years before,
but recently I saw it at the entrance in
a highlight on the bookstore, in a beautiful, hard cover.
I gave it a view.
I did not decide to buy, but it stayed with me, especially for having a few pages,
and as I listened before, being a classical.
I knew nothing of the plot.
I only recognized the title, vaguely, as something I heard before as a praised work,
and Isaac Eizimov handed keys to the Hugo Award in 1964, the best novelette of 1959.
He praised the work, that is, he praised the story, flowers for Algernon,
when he handed the whole wall, the award to keys.
Pardon me for all this, I'm laying on the bed at 120 of the night, the morning, no, no.
Well, I then, after discovering again the title on the bookstore,
now weeks or months later, after this event, searched about and discovered,
it was originally a short story, as we are talking about, and available online.
In the moment of the interest aroused, soon after producing.
Soon before producing this HDR episode, I was more than happy with the immediate possibility of reading,
instead of having to wait to buy the book or letting it stay, until the next visit to the public
library of Parana, that might have a copy. The first lines won me, so I kept reading in two
seats, two moments, and the latest one lying on the bed on the phone, the mobile phone.
It is 26 pages long, and about the plot.
Here, warning, starts a full revelation of the plot. If you want to stop listening,
reading the show notes, you are welcome if you don't want to listen.
For me, spoilers are not spoilers. I don't like watching or reading something,
because I know how it will end, or how the events of the story will develop,
because it's for the story, for how it's stored, etc., so knowing about the facts,
even if they all don't mind, but they call it spoilers, and even sometimes it's talking about
a movie of 1970, and you say, now I have to tell a spoiler. No, it's not a spoiler, you're talking
about a movie of 1970. Everything is a spoiler. If you're given the news, it might be a spoiler for
someone who may want to know all the context of the news, and you're talking only the ending,
it is a spoiler. No, it's not. So, spoilers. Now it's a spoiler.
The story is about a man that writes in first person, like a diary. It's a progress reports
about he being taught by a teacher, a woman, that is specialized in people with low abilities,
with disabilities, mental disabilities, like Charlie, who is telling us about the experiment he's
about to live. He tells about the work on the plastic box factory, where he's a janitor,
he cleans, and he's very good at it, and he loves to do it. He tells us along the pages and the
progress reports, then his manager, the owner of the enterprise, praises him because he's one that
likes what he do and does it well. He likes what he does and does it well.
All about it is the teacher of the class of low disability, low abilities,
adults, knows a scientist that wants to find a person to test,
opening the head. No, I think that's not a part. It's not opening the head. I think it's by the
eyes because after the operation, Charlie has abandoned on the eyes for one day. So, I think
it's where the operation is done. The scientist wants to do this operation to make an
retarded person smarter, very smart. Charlie has an IQ of 68 and they are going to
transform him or want to do, want to transform him in a genius with an IQ of over 200.
He then, after many tests, harshaq and l and more, and all those in a funny manner because
he's talking about people, treating him, how people deal with him and he doesn't know their
mockery. But he tells us normal circumstances. So, after he tests, he's a good person. He has
motivation like the ret that plays with him in mazes. And that was tested before him. It's a white
mouse that received the operation to be a genius and the ret the mouse really became a genius.
So, he played in his normal condition how to solve puzzles that is completing mazes and the
mouse always won. But even losing and being sad with it, Charlie was fond of the ret.
If I talk ret, I will keep as it. I won't correct it to my house, but it's a white mouse.
I don't know if there is a difference. English is not my native language.
The name of the mouse is Algernon. And Charlie was fond of Algernon. He was friend with him.
He wanted to be like him to solve the puzzles on the paper where the scientist put Algernon to go
into the maze to catch the cheese at the end. And at the same moment, Charlie received a paper to
do the maze on paper, but he was always behind the mouse completed earlier. Later we will discover
that as a genius also, so genius as Algernon, Charlie will beat Algernon. He will be faster.
And after some days of playing and being better, he wanted to play, but the scientist said,
no, it's not necessary anymore. Well, you know, he was selected for the operation. The operation
was successful. And as Daniel K. is the author of the story, he wanted to convey Algernon was
in front of that is, was a path before somewhere, before in the way, the same way that
Charlie is going to go. What am I saying? Saying that, what's happening or happened to Algernon?
We have an idea that is like suspense, like an idea of what's going to happen to Charlie.
So as a genius, Charlie is going to be rejected. He taught everyone, loved him. He taught everyone
was his friend at the factory, for example. But as someone who now understands,
who now reads a grammar in one day and the other day, all the text he's writing,
like the progress reports full of errors from the beginning of the story, because it is in first
person, in one day of the diary is all corrected in a good grammar and perfect orthography.
And also the sensibility to know what people think of him, what people do to him. So he is offended.
And even though he is not aggressive or thinks he is not, people despise him, people are afraid of him.
He even touched the shoulder of a coworker and the person jumped scared, because they were all
living him behind. Just because he is not understandable. He even called his teacher.
I think her name is Zalus. To dinner, the scientist responsible for the experiment and Charlie had
to return to the lab that is called a hospital, but is more of a laboratory periodically and keep
the progress reports written. They agreed with the inviting that he wanted to do and the teacher
also agreed. So they had dinner together and talked or tried to, because even though Charlie knows
how to communicate better now, nobody wants to know how is the mathematical progression of the 50
area of the composer X or Y. And he tried to stay in a day-to-day conversation without being
intellectual. This is what his mind came to be. And the story goes a little more on what I
told you. And the revelation or a little highlight, little peeking at the story is that from the
beginning, the scientist knew that the results, the uplifting of memory, cognition, of IQ
might not be permanent. At one moment, and Charlie knew that he was made aware beforehand and out he
wanted was to be smarter, to people like me more, to be smart as the other people. And all these come
to be not real, to be smarter, might not be the solution for him, for example, or in the specific case.
And in two that really came to, to know, to become temporary, the mouse, the little
afternoon, for whom the flowers are, was degrading, he was not more motivated, he was being aggressive,
he did not want anything more. So he was being fed normally, but ended up that one moment dying,
being, being less intelligent, the right, and died. And Charlie knew that it might have been to him,
was submitted to the same operation, to uplift his brain. So he came to study, he published
about, but there was not a solution, he already discovered, that a simple equation basically,
the more the higher the uplift of the brain is correlated to the time of the deterioration,
that is his peded up, he ended up, that's how you're known, but he understood many things. And
this is simply the plot, but of course, the narrative is not exploded only because of what they
caused, at least for me. So if you didn't wait or watch it in an adaptation, and want to do it,
maybe you were not disinterested only because of these revelations.
When Algernon died, Charlie was still a genius, and a friend of Algernon, he put him in a cheese box,
as his own personal cemetery, give flowers to him, put flowers for Algernon,
and put them weekly, even though everybody thought it was not common, it was a strange, but everything
now in Charlie's strange, when he was dying, and he was passing by at the end, Charlie wanted,
continued to put flowers, if you remember, to Algernon.
Let's go to the curiosity, I separated.
Man, it's about the simpsons, it's little quotation of bbc.com, you see the link on the show notes.
As well as cinematic and stage adaptations, the book inspired a musical,
starring Michael Crawford, and an episode of The Simpsons. In the episodes called Homer,
H.O.M.R., Homer's Simpsons discovers that a crayon lodged in his brain has been responsible for his
stupidity. On its removal, Homer becomes clever, only to have the crayon
being saided after becoming distanced from family and friends.
aired in 2001, the episode won an Emmy for outstanding animated program.
I forgot to mention about the plot, and I forgot to mention about the plot,
that Keese has said that among the inspirations for the story,
he was based on a phrase, an idea from the Aristotle Poetics, that it demands to be a
high porn to have a tragedy, because only when on height you can have a great fall.
So, this is what we see in Charlie. He solo, we can't have a tragedy,
at that point we needed to be, to he, we needed him to be up on the spheres,
on the height on the skies. So, we could have this beautiful tragedy.
About the author, he, Daniel Keese, died on June 15, 2004,
with the age of 86. I don't know if I said 2004, it's 2014, June 15, 2014,
with the age of 86, from complications of pneumonia.
At his home in Boca Raton, Florida, United States, his only wife, Aurea Georgina Vasquez,
whom he married in 1952. I made the accountability, it's 25 years he was of age,
had died, her wife had died one year, one month, and one day before him, on May 14, 2013,
they had two daughters. That's all for today, I thank you for listening to HPR,
here with you wasn't one. Bye, bye.
And onsthost.com, the Internet Archive and our Sync.net.
On this advice status, today's show is released under Creative Commons,
Attribution 4.0 International License.