Better Check

lunes, 21 de junio de 2010

TBT

Key Facts

full title · The Bean Trees

author · Barbara Kingsolver

type of work · Novel

genre · Journey or quest novel

language · English

time and place written · Tucson, Arizona; 1986–1987

date of first publication · 1988

publisher · HarperCollins

narrator · Most of the chapters are narrated by Taylor Greer, but Chapters Two and Four, which introduce Lou Ann, are narrated by an anonymous, omniscient narrator

point of view · For the most part, the story is told from Taylor’s point of view, and we are privy to her thoughts and feelings. Chapters Two and Four are written from a limited omniscient perspective, from which the narrator explains Lou Ann’s thinking.

tone · Folksy, poetic, humorous

tense · Immediate past

setting (time) · Early 1980s

setting (place) · The novel opens in rural Kentucky. Taylor travels across the country to Tucson, Arizona, where she settles. At the end of the novel, she takes a trip to Oklahoma before returning to Tucson.

protagonist · Taylor Greer

major conflict · Taylor tries to accept the responsibility of caring for another person and to understand the plight of political refugees

rising action · Taylor receives Taylor, grows close to Mattie and Lou Ann, and learns the story of Estevan and Esperanza

climax · Taylor decides to fight to keep Turtle and to risk her own safety for Estevan and Esperanza

falling action · Estevan and Esperanza pretend to be Turtle’s biological parents so that Taylor may adopt the little girl legally; Taylor delivers Estevan and Esperanza to their new home; Taylor and Turtle head back home to Tucson.

themes · The shared burden of womanhood; the plight of illegal immigrants; respect for the environment

motifs · Rebirth; motherhood

symbols · Beans and bean trees; Ismene; birds

foreshadowing · The postcard with two Indian women on it, which Taylor sends to her mother, foreshadows Taylor and Turtle’s relationship. The snake in the desert foreshadows the prowler that attacks Turtle. The survival of the bird that is trapped in the house foreshadows Turtle’s recovery.

SH5

Key Facts

full title · Slaughterhouse-Five; or, The Children’s Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death

author · Kurt Vonnegut

type of work · Novel

genre · Antiwar novel; historical fiction; science fiction; semi-autobiographical fiction

language · English

time and place written · Approximately 1945–1968, United States

date of first publication · 1969

publisher · Dell Publishing

narrator · The author; or arguably, sometimes an anonymous narrator with a similar point of view

point of view · The author narrates in both first and third person. The first-person sections are confined mainly to the first and last chapters. The narration is omniscient: it reveals the thoughts and motives of several characters, and provides details about their lives and some analysis of their motivations. The narrator primarily follows Billy Pilgrim but also presents the point of view of other characters whom Billy encounters.

tone · The narrator’s tone is familiar and ironic, and he uncovers touches of dark humor and absurdity that do not diminish the lyrical and emotional power of the material. His portrayal of Billy is intimate but ambivalent, and he occasionally emphasizes the diction of reported speech (prefacing a passage with “He says that” or “Billy says”) to draw a distinction between reality and Billy’s interpretation of events.

tense · The majority of the book is written in the past tense, but the narrator occasionally uses the present tense—especially in the first and last chapters—when speaking from a personal point of view as Kurt Vonnegut. The reporting of Billy’s speech is in the present tense (for example: “Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time. Or so he says.”) Occasionally the tense switches to future, as when Billy describes his future death.

setting (time) · The narrative provides a detailed account of Billy’s war experiences in 1944–1945, but it skips around his entire life, from his early childhood in the 1920s to his death in 1976. The author’s narration is set in 1968.

setting (place) · The narrative thread of 1944–1945 concerns Billy’s army service in Germany and briefly in Luxembourg, where he is captured after the Battle of the Bulge. Most of the rest of Billy’s life takes place in Ilium, New York. He also travels to the planet Tralfamadore and lives there in a zoo.

protagonist · Billy Pilgrim

major conflict · Billy struggles to make sense out of a life forever marked by the firsthand experience of war’s tragedy.

rising action · Billy and his fellow prisoners are transported across Germany and begin living in a slaughterhouse prison and working in the city of Dresden.

climax · Dresden is incinerated in a deadly firebomb attack. But Billy misses the moment of destruction, waiting out the attack in a well-protected meat locker. Psychologically, Billy does not come to terms with this event until nearly twenty years later, when the sight of a barbershop quartet on his wedding anniversary triggers his suppressed sense of grief.

falling action · The falling action occurs in the realm of Billy’s later life as he progresses toward a newfound consciousness and an increasingly tenuous mental state. Billy experiences alien abduction and prepares to share his new insights with the world.

themes · The destructiveness of war; the illusion of free will; the importance of sight

motifs · “So it goes”; the presence of the narrator as a character

symbols · The bird who says “Poo-tee-weet?”; the colors blue and ivory

foreshadowing · The narrative convention that Vonnegut dispenses with most thoroughly in this book is foreshadowing. He outlines all the events of Billy’s life before proceeding with the story.

FFA

Key Facts

full title · Flowers for Algernon

author · Daniel Keyes

type of work · Novel

genre · Science fiction

language · English

time and place written · Original short story written in 1959, in New York City; expanded novel version written from 1962 to 1965 in New York and Ohio.

date of first publication · Short story published in 1959; expanded novel form first published in 1966

publisher · Harcourt Brace Jovanovich

narrator · Charlie Gordon, a mentally disabled man who undergoes experimental surgery to increase his intelligence

point of view · The novel is told in the form of first-person “progress reports” Charlie keeps throughout the course of the experiment. Everything is filtered through Charlie’s mind, the capacities of which change drastically over the course of the novel, as Charlie’s IQ triples and then plummets back to its original level.

tone · The tone of the novel varies with Charlie’s mental acuity. Sometimes, however—particularly when Charlie is writing as a retarded man at the beginning and end of the novel— Keyes allows him to provide hints in his narration that allow us to grasp the significance of events that Charlie cannot himself understand.

tense · Past; Charlie is always writing about the days he has just lived through. Charlie experiences numerous flashbacks to his childhood, which are usually narrated in the present tense.

setting (time) · There are no direct references to time period in the novel, but we can assume the events take place around the time the novel was written, the mid-1960s.

setting (place) · New York City; one chapter takes place in Chicago

protagonist · Charlie Gordon

major conflict · Charlie struggles to reach emotional maturity and feel like a whole person before his skyrocketing intelligence reverses course and returns him to his initial mentally disabled state.

rising action · Dr. Strauss performs an experimental surgery on Charlie that catapults his intelligence to genius levels; Charlie falls in love with Alice but finds he is unable to consummate their relationship because he feels unresolved childhood shame about his sexuality.

climax · Charlie asserts his independence by running away from the scientists who are observing him; Alice tells Charlie that his work at the laboratory is more important than his relationship with Fay; Charlie realizes in this moment that he can no longer run from his fate or the seriousness of his emotional journey.

falling action · Charlie discovers the flaw in Nemur’s hypothesis that proves that he will soon lose his intelligence; Charlie locates his mother and sister and is able to find forgive them for how they treated him as a child; Charlie has a brief, fulfilling romantic affair with Alice; Charlie returns to his original mentally retarded state and checks himself into the Warren State Home.

themes · Mistreatment of the mentally disabled; the tension between intellect and emotion; the persistence of the past in the present

motifs · Changes in grammar, spelling, and punctuation; flashbacks; the scientific method

symbols · Algernon; Adam and Eve and the tree of knowledge; the window

foreshadowing · Professor Nemur tells Charlie at the outset of the experiment that his gains in intelligence may not be permanent, which turns out to be the case. Later, Charlie has a memory of his young sister, Norma, obnoxiously threatening to lose her own intelligence, another reference to Charlie’s eventual downfall. Finally, Algernon’s decline, beginning in Progress Report 13, is a reliable predictor of Charlie’s impending deterioration.

English Final

BEAN TREES

Character List

Taylor Greer - The protagonist of the novel, Taylor also narrates much of the story. She is a strong, gutsy woman, and her voice is both sassy and kind. Born and raised in rural Kentucky, she leaves to escape a small life in her hometown. Like her mother, she is proud of her Cherokee blood.

Read an in-depth analysis of Taylor Greer.

Turtle - The child given to Taylor in the middle of the Cherokee nation. She gets her name from her clinginess, which reminds Taylor of the mud turtles in Kentucky. She is so quiet and unengaged that many believe her to be dumb or retarded. This silence, however, is due to Turtle’s history: although she is only three years old, Turtle has already been physically and sexually abused. Although Taylor has spent her life avoiding pregnancy, she keeps Turtle with her.

Read an in-depth analysis of Turtle.

Lou Ann Ruiz - A Kentuckian woman who settled in Tucson with her baby, Dwayne Ray. Her husband, Angel, has just walked out on her when the story begins, and Taylor and Turtle move in with her. She worries about the terrible accidents and horror stories she hears about, fearing for the safety of herself and her baby. More sensitive and more provincial than Taylor, she is nonetheless a survivor.

Mattie - The owner of Jesus Is Lord Used Tires and a mother figure for Taylor. She is wise and kind. She allows illegal immigrants to stay in her home, operating a kind of sanctuary. Her garden of beautiful vegetables and car parts is an inspiration for Turtle, whose first word is bean and who loves all kinds of vegetables.

Read an in-depth analysis of Mattie.

Estevan - A Guatemalan refugee, he worked as an English teacher in Guatemala before he and his wife fled to the United States. He speaks beautiful English, and his kind ways inspire romantic feelings in Taylor. He lives in Mattie’s building with his wife, Esperanza. He enlightens Taylor about the corruption of Central American governments.

Read an in-depth analysis of Estevan.

Esperanza - Estevan’s wife. Her grave demeanor is a reflection of her sorrowful past. Turtle’s presence touches her because Turtle reminds her of the daughter she had to leave behind.

Ismene - Estevan and Esperanza’s daughter, whom they left in Guatemala. She represents both the horror of political corruption and the desperation that can necessitate the abandonment of children.

Angel Ruiz - Lou Ann’s husband, he is a Mexican man whom Lou Ann met when he worked in the rodeo in Kentucky. Angel’s prosthetic leg—the result of a pickup truck accident—wounds his pride terribly and makes him unhappy.

Alice Greer - Taylor’s mother, who lives in Kentucky. In Chapter One, Taylor says that her mother expects the best from her daughter and thinks that whatever Taylor does is wonderful. An encouraging, kind mother, she is the only part of Taylor’s hometown that Taylor misses when she leaves.

Read an in-depth analysis of Alice Greer.

Dwayne Ray - Lou Ann’s son. He was born on New Year’s Day.

Newt Hardbine - A classmate of Taylor’s. He drops out before graduation to help his family on its farm and dies before Taylor leaves Pittman County. He represents what could have been Taylor’s fate had she not had a wonderful mother and the determination to leave town.

Mrs. Virgie Parsons - Lou Ann’s grumpy neighbor, who sometimes baby-sits for the children. She makes insensitive remarks about immigrants.

Edna Poppy - The blind woman who lives with Mrs. Parsons. She is much warmer than her roommate.

Cynthia - The social worker who comes over after Turtle’s run-in with a miscreant in the park. Her prim attitude annoys Taylor, but her intentions are good.

Mr. Jonas Wilford Armistead - The legal authority in Oklahoma City who oversees Turtle’s adoption. An old white man, he treats Esperanza and Estevan like ignorant foreigners.

Granny Logan - Lou Ann’s grandmother. She is provincial and harbors many prejudices about Angel’s nationality. She hates the arid climate in Tucson and brings Lou Ann water from the Tug Fork River in Kentucky so that she may baptize Dwayne Ray properly.

Ivy - Lou Ann’s mother. She fights perpetually with Granny Logan, her mother-in-law. Like Granny Logan, she is provincial and has no interest in seeing Arizona.

Mrs. Hoge and Irene - The mother and daughter, respectively, who run the Broken Arrow Motor Lodge, where they let Turtle and Taylor stay free of charge on their trip west.

Father William - The priest who works with Mattie, transporting illegal immigrants to and from her house.

Lee-Sing - The woman who owns the grocery store and Laundromat next door to Jesus Is Lord Used Tires. Her mother brought the original bean seeds from China, the descendents of which now grow in Mattie’s yard.

Analysis of Major Characters

Taylor Greer

Taylor Greer is gutsy and practical. She views her hometown as stifling and tiny, and she decides she wants to avoid the trap of an early pregnancy and make her escape to a more interesting life. Taylor’s spirited, quirky voice shapes the novel. She perceives things in an original fashion, communicating her wonder at the customs and landscape of the Southwest with unusual metaphors and folksy language. Taylor settles in Tucson, Arizona, because its landscape strikes her as outlandish; newness and amusement appeal to her more than comfort or familiarity. As she contends with dangerous poverty, an unasked-for child, and many other trials, Taylor’s wit and spirit remain intact.

Although never naïve, Taylor becomes even more worldly after learning about the political corruption and personal tragedy faced by Estevan and Esperanza and the abuse inflicted on Turtle. Her sympathetic reaction to the difficulties of others reveals Taylor’s tenderheartedness. Taylor cares for the abandoned and the exiled with increasing enthusiasm as the novel progresses. Mattie calls her a hero for risking her own safety in order to achieve a more just society. In some ways, Taylor is an archetypal hero: she leaves her home and family, descends into darkness, and reemerges to accomplish some good for the sake of her society. She also functions as Esperanza’s comedic counterpart. Whereas tragedy permanently enshrouds Esperanza’s life, Taylor has a chance to hold on to her daughter and her happiness. Unlike traditional female heroines, Taylor’s adventures do not revolve around finding or keeping a man. Her life focuses instead on females—primarily on Turtle, but also on her mother, her friend, and her mentor. The male-female love she experiences remains purely platonic.

Lou Ann

Lou Ann is soft, motherly, and worrisome; she fears her own death and the death of her child. Far more womanly in a traditional sense than Taylor is, she pines for her husband and expresses her conviction that marriages and love should last forever. A Kentuckian, she retains the innocence of a small-town girl. Despite this innocence and occasional spates of homesickness, Lou Ann demonstrates her grit by moving to Tucson and then staying there alone to raise a child over the objections of her female relatives. She and Taylor form a functional family, caring for their children and for each other.

Lou Ann undergoes a transformation from dependent housewife into strong single mother. She has feminist instincts from the beginning of the novel, but initially she does not express them. She remains silent even though the sight of the local strip joint makes her shudder; she notices that her house feels more whole with her female relatives present than with her husband; she reflects on the strength of her body during her pregnancy. Around Chapter Ten, Lou Ann changes. She begins to speak about the contradictions and injustices of gender relations. She tells Taylor that she despises the obscene painting on the door of the strip joint. She searches for a job and accepts that she will have to support herself. She acts more boldly, scolding Taylor when Taylor does not fight hard for her rights.

Estevan

Though a cast of strong women peoples The Bean Trees, the only male character of consequence is Estevan, whose presence grows more important as the novel progresses. Taylor’s affection for him suggests that he is a welcome addition to an otherwise exclusively female world. Estevan represents the opposite of the stereotypically chauvinistic American male. A good man, he counters the novel’s villainous and sexually predatory men, such as Turtle’s abuser, the prowler in the park, and the absentee Angel. We empathize with Estevan not only because of his kindness, but because he lacks a homeland. Like women and like the natural environment, he knows destruction and persecution. Via Estevan, Kingsolver dispels many myths about illegal immigrants. One myth holds that immigrants cannot speak English well, but Estevan speaks better English than any of the native English-speakers in the novel. His pristine English and impeccable grammar suggest his intelligence and industry.

Turtle

A history of abuse makes Turtle silent for much of the novel. She seems almost catatonic, anxious to remain unnoticed and therefore unmolested. However, as the novel progresses and Turtle begins to trust that Taylor will take good care of her, the three-year-old girl becomes increasingly talkative and charming. She begins to preface friends’ names with the word Ma: Lou Ann becomes Ma Woo-Ahn, for example. She demonstrates a connection with the earth, taking great pleasure in naming vegetables and playing with seeds or dirt. Her made-up songs concern vegetables, and her preferred bedtime story is the seed catalogue. This love of the land links her, Kingsolver suggests, to her Native American heritage.

Alice Greer

One of the first characters we meet, Alice Greer sets the precedent for the series of strong, loving women that come after her in the novel. Kingsolver suggests that children become what they are told they will become; because Newt Hardbine is told he will fail, for example, he does fail. In contrast, because Alice constantly tells Taylor she is wonderful and smart and will succeed, Taylor is wonderful and smart and successful. Alice also represents the independence from men advocated by the novel. She lives happily, sometimes married, sometimes not, and never imagines she needs a man in order to raise Taylor.

Mattie

Mattie acts as a mother to hundreds of people, including Taylor. She does not fit the typical portrait of a mother figure, however, for although she is wise and loving, she is also fearsomely intelligent and tough. Her combination safe house, garden, and tire shop symbolize Mattie’s combination of qualities. Mattie does not push anyone to act heroically, as she herself acts, but she does inspire heroism through her own actions. She also breathes fresh air into the lives of her provincial, undereducated friends with her work as an intellectual. The other characters only dimly grasp her work as an activist and an intellectual, but the fact that it exists points to a world outside the novel’s scope.

Important Quotations Explained

1. “I have always thought you had a wonderful way with words,” he said. “You don’t need to go fishing for big words in the dictionary. You are poetic, mi’ija.” . . . “Well, thank you for the compliment,” I said, “but that’s the biggest bunch of hogwash, what you said. When did I ever say anything poetic?” “Washing hogs is poetic,” he said.

Explanation for Quotation 1 >>

These lines from Chapter Eight record a conversation between Estevan and Taylor. To emphasize the idea that immigrants should be treated with respect, Kingsolver pointedly makes Estevan, an immigrant, the character with the best command of the English language. He is better educated and more articulate than any of his friends, all of whom use slang and bad grammar. Kingsolver does not condemn those characters who use nonstandard English, as this quotation indicates; rather, she suggests that all forms of English can be considered poetic. Although Taylor wishes she could use bigger words, like Estevan does, Estevan points out that her slang and colloquial expressions are beautiful. Taylor’s “hogwash,” Esperanza’s silence, and Turtle’s vegetable songs all have their own bit of poetry.

2. Turtle shook her head. “Bean trees,” she said, as plainly as if she had been thinking about it all day. We looked where she was pointing. Some of the wisteria flowers had gone to seed, and all these wonderful long green pods hung down from the branches. They looked as much like beans as anything you’d ever care to eat. “Will you look at that,” I said. It was another miracle. The flower trees were turning into bean trees.

Explanation for Quotation 2 >>

These lines, which come from Chapter Ten, occur as Lou Ann, Taylor, Turtle, and Dwayne Ray sit in Roosevelt Park (commonly known as “Dog Doo Park”). The quotation points to the novel’s idea that miracles happen in modest or unlikely places. Appropriately, it is Turtle who makes the discovery that gives the novel its title. Turtle is herself a miracle in an unlikely place. Like the bean trees discovered in the ugly park, Turtle is discovered in a barren parking lot. And like the dirty, barren park, which later seems magical, Turtle at first strikes Taylor as an unwanted burden, but gradually becomes more and more important to Taylor, until the possibility of losing Turtle becomes the main conflict in the novel.

3. Lou Ann shuddered. “That door’s what gets me. The way they made the door handle. Like a woman is something you shove on and walk right through. I try to ignore it, but it still gets me.” “Don’t ignore it, then,” I said. “Talk back to it. Say, ‘You can’t do that number on me, you shit-for-brains.’ . . . What I’m saying is you can’t just sit there, you got to get pissed off.”

Explanation for Quotation 3 >>

In Chapter Ten, Lou Ann and Taylor discuss Fanny Heaven, the local strip joint. Lou Ann has just had her first job interview, during which her interviewer talked to her breasts instead of to her face. This quotation demonstrates Taylor’s usual feistiness and spirited support of her friend. With Taylor, Lou Ann feels comfortable articulating a disgust that until this point she kept secret. Previously, Lou Ann had tolerated the offensive strip club in silence, thinking of it as an unassailable part of her surroundings. Here, for the first time, she identifies her discomfort aloud, even identifying what particularly upsets her: the mural of a woman painted so that the door handle opens into the woman’s crotch. Kingsolver makes a point by including Fanny Heaven in her novel. The existence of the strip club suggests that the sexual violence or violent attacks suffered by women do not spring from nowhere, but are the byproduct of a society that objectifies and exploits women’s bodies.

4. The whole Tucson Valley lay in front of us, resting in its cradle of mountains. The sloped desert plain that lay between us and the city was like a palm stretched out for a fortuneteller to read, with its mounds and hillocks, its life lines and heart lines of dry stream beds.

Explanation for Quotation 4 >>

This description comes in Chapter Twelve, at the time of the first rain, when Mattie takes her young friends into the desert so they can see the natural world come to life. This quotation, typical of Kingsolver’s descriptions of the natural landscape, shows her consciousness of the environment. It also exemplifies Kingsolver’s use of unusual metaphors. By describing the landscape as the palm of a human hand, Kingsolver personifies the mountains and city. Her phrase “resting in its cradle of mountains” likens the valley to a baby, and the phrases “city like a palm” and “life lines and heart lines” suggest an adult. The land embodies a life lived from birth to death. Taylor falls in love with the Arizona land and sky, and her appreciation for nature in all its forms, with all its surprises, mirrors the values the novel espouses.

5. It didn’t seem to matter to Turtle, she was happy where she was. . . . She watched the dark highway and entertained me with her vegetable-soup song, except that now there were people mixed in with the beans and potatoes: Dwayne Ray, Mattie, Esperanza, Lou Ann and all the rest. And me. I was the main ingredient.

Explanation for Quotation 5 >>

These lines recount Taylor’s thoughts at the end of the novel, in Chapter Seventeen, as she and Turtle head back to Tucson. With this final scene, Kingsolver provides a mirror image of Taylor’s first trip to Tucson with Turtle, during which the little girl’s behavior was entirely different. On the first trip, Turtle remained so silent and motionless that Turtle wondered if she had died. On this trip, Turtle remains wide awake, happily babbling about her vegetables. Most important, Turtle now includes names of people in her vegetable-soup song. This marks a change, because in the beginning, Turtle could not connect with people or form ties to them. By adding names of people she knows to her babble, Turtle shows she has begun to recover from her history of abuse and has gained the ability to trust people. Most significant is that she identifies Taylor as the “main ingredient.” For a space of time, Turtle demonstrated her confusion about her caretakers by calling most women in her life “Ma.” Now, she identifies Taylor as her mother. The last sentence of this quotation reaffirms not only Turtle’s attachment to Taylor, but also Taylor’s happiness in hearing herself identified as the main ingredient, and her confidence in herself as a mother.

SLAUGHTER-HOUSE FIVE

Character List

Billy Pilgrim - A World War II veteran, POW survivor of the firebombing of Dresden, prospering optometrist, husband, and father. Billy Pilgrim is the protagonist of the novel who believes he has “come unstuck in time.” He walks through a door at one moment in his life and suddenly finds himself in another time and place. His fragmented experience of time structures the novel as short episodic vignettes and shows how the difficulty of recounting traumatic experiences can require unusual literary techniques.

Read an in-depth analysis of Billy Pilgrim.

Kurt Vonnegut - The novel’s author and a minor character. Vonnegut himself was a prisoner of war during the firebombing of Dresden, and he periodically inserts himself in the narrative, as when he becomes the incontinent soldier in the latrine in the German prison camp. This authorial presence reappears throughout the novel, particularly in the refrain “So it goes” that follows each mention of death. Vonnegut’s commentary as a character and an author enables a more factual interpretation of a story that seems almost preternaturally fictional and adds support to the idea that such fantastical elements may be the reality of a traumatized mind.

Bernhard V. O’Hare - A wartime pal of Vonnegut. O’Hare appears when Vonnegut visits him and his wife in Pennsylvania while trying to do research and collect remembrances for his Dresden book. Like his wife, Mary, and Vonnegut himself, O’Hare, a nonfictional character, helps groundSlaughterhouse-Five in reality. Vonnegut actually has this other survivor of the firebombing contribute to the research and recollection process involved in creating the book, which allows us to take the novelistic details as fact and appreciate the thoughtful manner in which they are presented.

Mary O’Hare - Bernhard O’Hare’s wife. Mary gets upset with Vonnegut because she believes that he will glorify war in his novel; Vonnegut, however, promises not to do so. Slaughterhouse-Five is a condemnation of war, and Vonnegut’s decision to dedicate the novel in part to Mary suggests how deeply he agrees with her that the ugly truth about war must be told.

Gerhard Müller - The nonfictional taxi driver who takes Vonnegut and O’Hare back to their Dresden slaughterhouse. Müller later sends O’Hare a Christmas card bearing tidings of peace, and Vonnegut dedicates the novel in part to Müller—two simple gestures of sympathy that stand out amid the novel’s pervasive cruelty and violence.

Roland Weary - A stupid, cruel soldier taken prisoner by the Germans along with Billy. Unlike Billy, who is totally out of place in the war, Weary is a deluded glory-seeker who fancies himself part of the Three Musketeers and saves Billy’s life out of a desire to be heroic.

Wild Bob - An army colonel in the German rail yard who has lost his mind. Wild Bob asks if Billy belongs to his regiment when, in fact, all his men are dead. He invites everyone to visit him in Wyoming, but his arbitrary death shows how the war makes such gestures both poignant and pointless.

Paul Lazzaro - Another POW and the man responsible for Billy’s death. Lazzaro, a revenge-loving ruffian with criminal tendencies, arranges for Billy’s assassination to avenge Roland Weary’s death. Lazzaro’s determination to kill Billy does not create a conflict between the two characters, however; because Billy has accepted the Tralfamadorians’ conception of nonlinear time, he is unconcerned by his death.

Edgar Derby - Another survivor of Dresden’s incineration. Following the firebombing, Derby is sentenced to die by firing squad for plundering a teapot from the wreckage. His death is anticlimactic, since Billy does not view it with any sense of pathos, but rather as an inevitability.

Valencia Merble - Billy’s pleasant, fat wife who loves him dearly. Valencia and Billy share a well-appointed home and have two children together, but Billy consistently distances himself from his family.

Tralfamadorians - Aliens shaped like toilet plungers, each with one hand containing an eye in its palm. The Tralfamadorians’ philosophies of time and death influence the narrative style of the novel. They perceive time as an assemblage of moments existing simultaneously rather than as a linear progression, and the episodic nature of Slaughterhouse-Five reflects this notion of time. Their acceptance of death, which Billy embraces, leads the narrator to remark simply “So it goes” at each mention of death.

Eliot Rosewater - A war veteran who occupies the bed near Billy in the mental ward of a veterans’ hospital. Like Billy, Rosewater is suffering from the aftereffects of war, and he finds escape—and helps Billy find escape—in the science-fiction novels of Kilgore Trout.

Kilgore Trout - A bitter, unappreciated author of several cleverly ironic science-fiction novels that have a great influence on Billy. Trout, who appears in many of Vonnegut’s works, functions as Vonnegut’s alter ego.

Howard W. Campbell, Jr. - An American who has become a Nazi. Campbell speaks to the prisoners in the slaughterhouse and tries to recruit them for “The Free American Corps,” a German army unit that he is forming to fight the Russians. Campbell represents all that is wrong with war; he desires to use people for perverse ideological ends.

Werner Gluck - A young German guard at the slaughterhouse. Gluck gets his first glimpse of a naked woman along with Billy. Their shared intrigue and interest in the naked female body unites these two men from different sides, reflecting how fundamentally human feelings—such as lust—can trump differences of political ideology.

Montana Wildhack - A nubile young actress who is kidnapped by the Tralfamadorians to be Billy’s mate inside the zoo. Billy wins Montana’s trust and love, and fathers a child by her in Tralfamadore. But Billy likely is delusional about his experiences with Montana, whose presence may have been imaginatively triggered by a visit to an adult bookstore in Times Square, where he sees her videos and a headline claiming to reveal her fate.

Barbara Pilgrim - Billy’s daughter, newly married at the age of twenty-one, who is faced with the sudden death of her mother and the apparent mental breakdown of her father. Barbara represents the follow-up generation to the one ravaged by World War II. While Billy’s ability to function in life and be successful in a career paves the way for Barbara’s development, his war trauma and delusions constantly frustrate her.

Bertram Copeland Rumfoord - A Harvard history professor and the official U.S. Air Force historian who is laid up by a skiing accident in the same Vermont hospital as Billy after his plane crash. Rumfoord’s reluctance to believe that Billy was present during the Dresden raid embodies the bureaucratic attitude that seeks to glorify the war and its heroes instead of realistically portraying war’s destructiveness and its haphazard selection of survivors.

Lily Rumfoord - Rumfoord’s young trophy wife and research assistant. Lily Rumfoord is frightened of Billy, but she lies silent in the next bed as a symbol of the scope of powerlessness and lack of free will.

Robert Pilgrim - Billy’s son, who is a failure and a delinquent at school, though he cleans up his life enough to become a Green Beret in the Vietnam War. Robert’s presence in the story during Billy’s later life helps illustrate the pervasiveness of Billy’s war trauma, especially his inability to communicate and relate to his own son. Robert’s successful self-reformation from delinquency to discipline (in Vietnam) seems to indicate Vonnegut’s acceptance of the inevitability of war.

Billy’s mother - Billy’s mother is described as a woman “trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops” (she once hung a grisly crucifix in Billy’s room but never joined a church because she couldn’t settle on a denomination). She visits Billy in the mental hospital, and her presence embarrasses him because he feels like an ungrateful son for being indifferent to life.

Billy’s father - Billy’s father throws young Billy into the YMCA pool to teach him how to swim. Billy prefers the bottom of the pool, but he is rescued unwillingly from drowning after he loses consciousness. This incident initiates the novel’s theme of the illusory nature of free will.

Character Analysis

Billy Pilgrim

Billy Pilgrim is the unlikeliest of antiwar heroes. An unpopular and complacent weakling even before the war (he prefers sinking to swimming), he becomes a joke as a soldier. He trains as a chaplain’s assistant, a duty that earns him disgust from his peers. With scant preparation for armed conflict, no weapons, and even an improper uniform, he is thrust abruptly into duty at the Battle of the Bulge. The farcical spectacle created by Billy’s inappropriate clothing accentuates the absurdity of such a scrawny, mild-mannered soldier. His azure toga, a leftover scrap of stage curtain, and his fur-lined overcoat, several sizes too small, throw his incongruity into relief. They underscore a central irony: such a creature could walk through war, oblivious yet unscathed, while so many others with more appropriate attire and provisions perish. It is in this shocked and physically exhausted state that Billy first comes “unstuck in time” and begins swinging to and fro through the events of his life, past and future.

Billy lives a life full of indignity and so, perhaps, has no great fear of death. He is oddly suited, therefore, to the Tralfamadorian philosophy of accepting death. This fact may point to an interpretation of the Tralfamadorians as a figment of Billy’s disturbed mind, an elaborate coping mechanism to explain the meaningless slaughter Billy has witnessed. By uttering “So it goes” after each death, the narrator, like Billy, does not diminish the gravity of death but rather lends an equalizing dignity to all death, no matter how random or ironic, how immediate or removed. Billy’s father dies in a hunting accident just as Billy is about to go off to war. So it goes. A former hobo dies in Billy’s railway car while declaring the conditions not bad at all. So it goes. One hundred thirty thousand innocent people die in Dresden. So it goes. Valencia Pilgrim accidentally kills herself with carbon monoxide after turning bright blue. So it goes. Billy Pilgrim is killed by an assassin’s bullet at exactly the time he has predicted, in the realization of a thirty-some-year-old death threat. So it goes. Billy awaits death calmly, without fear, knowing the exact hour at which it will come. In so doing, he gains a degree of control over his own dignity that he has lacked throughout most of his life.

The novel centers on Billy Pilgrim to a degree that excludes the development of the supporting characters, who exist in the text only as they relate to Billy’s experience of events.

Important Quotations Explained

1. It is so short and jumbled and jangled, Sam, because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again. Everything is supposed to be very quiet after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds. And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like “Poo-tee-weet?”

Explanation for Quotation 1 >>

Kurt Vonnegut, as the narrator, addresses his publisher Seymour (“Sam”) Lawrence directly in this passage from Chapter 1. He seems to apologize for delivering such a short, fragmented manuscript. The irony of this passage is that if there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre, then writing a book about one, no matter how short, is a major accomplishment. Perhaps like birdsong, the book merely serves as a simple communication demonstrating that life still exists in a devastated world. The bird’s inquisitive refrain returns in the very last line of the novel, leaving us with the unanswered question of what life is like in the aftermath of war—life’s most devastating enemy.

2. Billy had a framed prayer on his office wall which expressed his method for keeping going, even though he was unenthusiastic about living. A lot of patients who saw the prayer on Billy’s wall told him that it helped them to keep going, too. It went like this: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom always to tell the difference.” Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present, and the future.

Explanation for Quotation 2 >>

This passage occurs in Chapter 3, after Billy has been kidnapped and taken to Tralfamadore in 1968. There he sees the same inscription on a locket around the neck of Montana Wildhack, the actress brought to mate with Billy in the Tralfamadorian zoo. The saying brings to light the central conflict of Billy’s attempt to live a Tralfamadorian life in a human world: he subscribes to the Tralfamadorian belief that there is a fourth dimension of time and that time is cyclical, but he lives in a world in which everyone believes that time moves in a single, linear progression. Tralfamadorians would argue that humans never know the difference between the things they cannot change because there is no difference; nothing is negotiable in a universe of predefined, structured moments.

3. Billy answered. There was a drunk on the other end. Billy could almost smell his breath—mustard gas and roses. It was a wrong number. Billy hung up.

Explanation for Quotation 3 >>

In Chapter 4, the night after his daughter’s wedding in 1967, Billy gets up out of bed, unable to sleep. He knows that the flying saucer will come for him soon. He wanders into his daughter’s empty bedroom, the phone rings, and on the other end is a drunk. It is unusual that Billy claims he can almost to smell the mustard gas and roses on his breath over the phone. This detail emerges through a kind of empathy that seems to connect otherwise unrelated moments in the omniscient narration. We, the readers, recognize this drunk from Chapter 1: he is the author, Kurt Vonnegut, who in his middle age has a tendency to make drunken phone calls late at night to old girlfriends, his breath stinking of mustard gas and roses. The odd combination of mustard gas, often used as a chemical weapon, and roses, a symbol of romance, highlights how deeply the war has affected Vonnegut’s life.

4. “If I hadn’t spent so much time studying Earthlings,” said the Tralfamadorian, “I wouldn’t have any idea what was meant by ‘free will.’ I’ve visited thirty-one inhabited planets in the universe, and I have studied reports on one hundred more. Only on Earth is there any talk of free will.”

Explanation for Quotation 4 >>

This quotation comes at the end of Chapter 4, as Billy listens to his captors describe the true nature of time. These words reveal that not only do Tralfamadorians have a completely deterministic view of the universe in which every moment is structured beyond the control of its participants, but that they also lack an awareness of the possibility of free will. The alien who talks to Billy is an exception, having encountered the peculiarly human hang-up in his travels. But he maintains that humans, alone among all beings in the universe, believe in the illusion of free will. His emphasis on the idea of “studying” humans and inhabitants of other planets makes humans (and their conception of free will) and other non--Tralfamadorians seem like bizarre exceptions to the rule of nature. He thus performs a reversal of the human tendency to think of alien life as abnormal.

5. There isn’t any particular relationship between the messages, except that the author has chosen them carefully, so that, when seen all at once, they produce an image of life that is beautiful and surprising and deep. There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time.

Explanation for Quotation 5 >>

In this passage at the beginning of Chapter 5, one of Billy’s captors explains the Tralfamadorian novel to him. It seems that Vonnegut has taken this template as a model for Slaughterhouse-Five, down to the rows of asterisks or dots separating short clumps of text. The irony of such a strategy is that Vonnegut, like Billy, lacks the Tralfamadorian ability to pick and choose his moments. Vonnegut thus considers his book a failure of sorts, because he has achieved the Tralfamadorian structure without its accompanying depth and beauty, and because he has come up with nothing more intelligent or deep to say about a massacre than “Poo-tee-weet.” Most readers would argue, however, that Vonnegut has actually succeeded in making a thing of great beauty out of a collection of tragic moments.

FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON

Character List

Charlie Gordon - The protagonist and author of the progress reports that form the text of Flowers for Algernon. Charlie is a thirty-two-year-old mentally retarded man who lives in New York City. He works at Donner’s Bakery as a janitor and delivery boy. Charlie’s friendliness and eagerness to please, along with his childhood feelings of inadequacy, make him the hardest-working student in Alice Kinnian’s literacy class for retarded adults. When Charlie undergoes an experimental surgery to increase his intelligence, his IQ skyrockets to the level of a genius. His obsession with untangling his own emotional life and his longing to reach an emotional maturity and inner peace to match his intellectual authority inform many of the novel’s primary concerns.

Read an in-depth analysis of Charlie Gordon.

Alice Kinnian - Charlie’s teacher at the Beekman College Center for Retarded Adults. Alice originally recommends Charlie for the experimental operation because she is impressed by his motivation. Although she is not one of the scientists who perform the experiment on Charlie, she acts as an unofficial member of the team because of her concern for him. She is interested in intellectual pursuits but is ultimately more motivated by emotion. Alice is the one woman with whom Charlie briefly finds loving fulfillment.

Read an in-depth analysis of Alice Kinnian.

Professor Harold Nemur - The scientist in charge of the experiment that heightens Charlie’s intelligence. An arrogant and career-obsessed man, Nemur treats Charlie as a laboratory animal rather than a human being. Nemur has a tendency to imply that he created Charlie, as if his mentally challenged patient is not a human. Nemur is tormented somewhat by his wife, who seems even more fixated on his career than he is.

Dr. Strauss - The neurologist and psychiatrist who performs the experimental operation that raises Charlie’s intelligence, and Nemur’s partner in the experiment. Dr. Strauss conducts therapy sessions with Charlie after the operation. Unlike Nemur, Dr. Strauss maintains interest in and concern for Charlie’s emotional development.

Burt Selden - A friendly graduate student who is working on his thesis and who assists Strauss and Nemur in conducting the experiment. Burt oversees the testing of both Charlie and Algernon. He introduces Charlie to some of the students and faculty at Beekman College.

Algernon - The white mouse that is the first successful test subject for the experimental operation Charlie later undergoes. The operation makes Algernon three times as intelligent as a normal mouse and enables him to solve complex puzzles.

Fay Lillman - Charlie’s neighbor in the apartment building that he moves into after running away from the scientific convention. Fay is an attractive, free-spirited, and sexually liberal artist whose favorite pastimes are drinking and dancing. She embarks on a brief affair with Charlie, knowing nothing about his background.

Rose Gordon - Charlie’s mother, a domineering woman terribly ashamed of Charlie’s retardation. In the early part of his childhood, Rose refused to accept that Charlie was abnormal, despite her husband’s appeals for her to be rational. Rose finally had another child, Norma, on whom she focused all of her energy. Rose routinely punished Charlie for any sign of sexual interest, as she could not accept the notion of her retarded son having any form of sexuality.

Read an in-depth analysis of Rose Gordon.

Matt Gordon - Charlie’s father, a barbershop-supply salesman who always wanted to open his own barbershop, and eventually does. Although Matt tried to protect the young Charlie from Rose’s hostility, he gave in too easily to her bullying.

Norma Gordon - Charlie’s younger sister, who grows up to act as caretaker for their mentally unstable mother. During their childhood, Norma resented Charlie for getting what she perceived as special treatment and was cruel to him. When she reencounters Charlie as an adult, however, she is glad to see him and regrets her youthful spite.

Uncle Herman - Charlie’s uncle, who took care of Charlie after Rose expelled him from her home. Herman was generous to Charlie, protected him from neighborhood bullies, and set him up with his longtime job at Donner’s Bakery. At the beginning of the novel, Herman has been dead for years.

Mr. Donner - The owner of the bakery where Charlie works. A friend of Uncle Herman, Mr. Donner agreed to hire Charlie so he would not have to go to the Warren State Home upon Herman’s death. Donner gave Herman his word that he would look out for Charlie’s interests. Donner stands by his pledge faithfully and treats Charlie like family.

Frank Reilly and Joe Carp - Two employees at Donner’s Bakery who often pick on Charlie. Frank and Joe play tricks on Charlie and make him the butt of jokes that he does not understand. However, Frank and Joe think of themselves as Charlie’s friends and defend him when others pick on him.

Gimpy - A baker at Donner’s Bakery who secretly steals from his boss. Gimpy got his nickname because of his limp. His relationship with Charlie is much like Frank and Joe’s relationship with Charlie.

Fanny Birden - The only bakery employee who is consistently nice to Charlie. Fanny does not like to see the others pick on Charlie because of his disability. When Charlie becomes a genius, Fanny is glad for him but is highly suspicious and wonders if he has made a deal with the devil.

Dr. Guarino - A quack doctor to whom Charlie was taken as a child. Dr. Guarino promised Rose that he could scientifically increase Charlie’s intelligence, but his methods are a complete sham. Guarino, however, was kind to Charlie.

Hilda - The nurse on duty while Charlie is first recovering from his operation. Hilda believes that Charlie may be defying God’s will by trying to gain intelligence unnaturally.

Minnie - An ordinary female mouse Fay purchases so that Algernon can have a companion.

Meyer Klaus - A brutish new employee at Donner’s Bakery who is working there when Charlie briefly reassumes his job after losing his temporary intelligence.

Analysis of Major Characters

Charlie Gordon

Charlie is the narrator and the main character of the novel, and his miraculous transformation from mental disability to genius sets the stage for Keyes to address a number of broad themes and issues. Charlie’s lack of intelligence has made him a trusting and friendly man, as he assumes that the people in his life—most notably, his coworkers at Donner’s Bakery—are as well intentioned as he is. As his intelligence grows, however, Charlie gains perspective on his past and present. He realizes that people have often taken advantage of him and have been cruel to him for sport, knowing that he would not understand. Likewise, he realizes that when people have been kind to him, it usually has been out of condescension or out of an awareness that he is inferior. These realizations cause Charlie to grow suspicious of nearly everyone around him. Interestingly, the experimental operation elevates Charlie’s intelligence to such an extent that his new genius distances him from people as much as his disability does. Charlie eventually convinces himself that he has lost feeling even for Alice Kinnian, the one person whom he feels has never betrayed him and the only one for whom he has maintained a deep affection throughout his life.

Feeling isolated from humanity, Charlie pursues a course of self-education and struggles to untangle his emotional life. He comes to feel that his mind contains two people: the new, genius Charlie, who wants to reach emotional maturity, and the older, disabled Charlie, whose actions are largely informed by the fear and shame his mother, Rose, instilled in him. To reach his goal, the new Charlie must come to grips with the traumas the old Charlie experienced.

Although Charlie resents the mistreatment he endured while disabled, he harbors hostility toward his old self and, ironically, feels the same lack of respect for his intellectual inferiors that many others used to feel for him. It is only in the final weeks of Charlie’s heightened intelligence, before he reverts to his previous mental retardation, that he learns to forgive his family and give and receive love. Charlie’s brief moment of emotional grace comes in the form of the fulfilling but fleeting romantic affair he has with Alice. Finally, though Charlie lapses back to his original state at the end of the novel, a newfound sense of self-worth remains within him, despite the fact that he has lost his short-lived intelligence.

Alice Kinnian

Alice Kinnian is the one person with whom Charlie comes to experience a truly fulfilling personal relationship. It is fitting that throughout the novel Alice represents the human warmth and kindness that persist in the face of the intellectual and scientific focus of many of the other characters. Alice teaches literacy skills to mentally retarded adults because she cares about and enjoys working with her students; she does not believe that their disabilities make them lesser human beings. She takes genuine satisfaction in helping people and recommends Charlie for Nemur and Strauss’s experiment because she admires Charlie’s desire to learn. Charlie appreciates Alice’s concern for his well-being; she is a constant presence in his earliest progress reports, even though she is not a member of the scientific team that is examining him.

In Alice’s concern and affection lie the seeds of her eventual romantic love for Charlie. Though she is often deeply confused throughout their relationship, uncertain of what is and is not appropriate in their unique situation, Alice displays unwavering care for Charlie as his IQ boomerangs up and back down again. Her ability to accept Charlie as a person of any level of intelligence sets Alice apart from the other characters in the novel, who consistently judge Charlie only on his intellect. Though she is driven by emotion, Alice is not at all anti-intellectual; on the contrary, she is fascinated by academia and high culture. Though intellect and emotion seem to be opposed throughout the novel, Alice’s intellectual leanings demonstrate that one need not sacrifice his or her ability to love in order to enjoy a life of the mind.

Professor Nemur

If Alice represents the possibility of an emotionally healthy adulthood, Nemur represents the opposite. He is a man of great intellect but little ability to relate to others. Unlike his partner, Dr. Strauss, Nemur is never interested in Charlie’s human emotions; he cares only about Charlie’s quantifiable progress as an experimental subject. Professor Nemur thinks of Charlie just as he thinks of Algernon—as a laboratory animal. Pressured by a domineering wife, Nemur is desperate to advance his career and longs for his peers to regard him as brilliant. Nemur cannot stand to be shown up by anyone—not by Strauss, and certainly not by Charlie. He is deeply perturbed when Charlie surpasses him intellectually and takes command of the experiment. Though Charlie resents Nemur for most of the novel, we see after the operation that Charlie himself is potentially at risk of becoming cold and loveless like Nemur.

Rose Gordon

Obsessed by an imaginary ideal of normalcy, Rose initially responded to Charlie’s mental disability with denial. She insisted that her son was normal, and she developed a delusional theory that he was brilliant but was cursed by jealous neighborhood mothers. Her refusal to accept her son’s disability was demonstrated by her decision to name Charlie’s younger sister Norma because it sounds like “normal.” After Norma’s birth, Rose turned her full attention to Norma’s success and tried to ignore Charlie altogether. Signs of Charlie’s progression toward adulthood, especially his manifestations of sexuality, infuriated Rose. She demanded that Charlie be removed from her home. By denying his existence, she also denied what she perceived to be her failure as a mother.

When Charlie, now brilliant after his operation, visits an aged Rose near the end of the novel, her capacity for denial has grown into full-fledged dementia. She switches back and forth from recognizing Charlie to thinking he is a stranger, and back and forth from pride at his recent accomplishments to an irrational fear that he has come back to molest Norma. In her old age, Rose has been driven entirely mad by her overwhelming yet doomed desire to be what she perceives as normal.

Important Quotations Explained

1. And he said that meens Im doing something grate for sience and Ill be famus and my name will go down in the books. I dont care so much about beeing famus. I just want to be smart like other pepul so I can have lots of frends who like me.

Explanation for Quotation 1 >>

Here, in his “progris riport 6th,” Charlie recounts a conversation he has with Nemur shortly before his operation. Nemur cannot guarantee that Charlie’s procedure will be successful, but he is trying to make Charlie feel good about his participation in the experiment nonetheless. Nemur’s attempts to impress Charlie with promises of fame and great contributions to science reveal his true motivations. It is Nemur who wants his name to “go down in the books,” not Charlie. On the contrary, Charlie’s reason for wanting to be intelligent is purely social: he wants people to like him. Charlie knows that his retardation has cut him off from most of society, but his powerlessness does not upset him. Charlie does not long to join society to increase his social standing; rather, he longs to join primarily because he is lonely. In Charlie’s mind, intelligence is the quality that will gain him entry into a world of friends. The resulting irony is that when Charlie does become incredibly intelligent, he finds himself even lonelier than before.

2. “And I hate school! I hate it! I’ll stop studying, and I’ll be a dummy like him. I’ll forget everything I learned and then I’ll be just like him.” She runs out of the room, shrieking: “It’s happening to me already. I’m forgetting everything . . . I’m forgetting . . . I don’t remember anything I learned any more!”

Explanation for Quotation 2 >>

This passage, from Progress Report 12, is part of one of Charlie’s flashbacks to his childhood, in this case the incident when Norma demands her parents give her a dog because she has received an A on her history exam. After her father denies Norma the dog because she refuses to allow Charlie to help care for it, Norma angrily threatens her parents. She feels that Charlie is getting preferential treatment because he is retarded, and she suggests that perhaps she should become a “dummy” like him to receive the same treatment. Though Norma is clearly being absurd and sarcastic, for a moment it seems that she genuinely envies Charlie’s retardation—the only time in the novel when anyone perceives Charlie’s disability as an advantage. Listening to Norma rant, however, Charlie can hardly feel that he is in an enviable position. His disability, which he cannot help, makes his sister miserable.

Norma’s threat to lose her intelligence is meant to be just as ludicrous as the notion that Charlie could gain intelligence by his own will. Of course, many years later, Charlie does in fact gain intelligence. Norma’s remark—“I don’t remember anything I learned any more!”—is a cruel joke meant to upset her parents, but it also foreshadows exactly what happens to Charlie at the end of the novel.

3. We were the main attraction of the evening, and when we settled, the chairman began his introduction. I half expected to hear him boom out:Laideezzz and gentulmennnnnn. Step right this way and see the side show! An act never before seen in the scientific world! A mouse and a moron turned into geniuses before your very eyes!

Explanation for Quotation 3 >>

This passage appears in Progress Report 13, when Charlie and Algernon accompany Nemur and Strauss to the scientific convention in Chicago where they are presenting their findings. The researchers treat Charlie and Algernon as exhibits, and Charlie grows increasingly upset that he is being treated as more of a laboratory animal than a human being. At the convention, Charlie’s feeling of victimization reaches a new level of intensity. He is surrounded by an entire auditorium of scientists who are curious to see him not as an individual but merely as the result of Nemur and Strauss’s experiment. Charlie feels as though there are hundreds of Nemurs all eyeing him clinically, and that he is there not so much to enlighten the scientists as to entertain them. He imagines the chairman of the conference as a carnival barker, touting Charlie and Algernon as a “side show,” the portion of the circus where so-called freaks are put on display. Charlie imagines the chairman callously referring to him as a “moron,” grotesquely proving that he is not the least bit concerned with Charlie’s feelings. This paranoid fantasy is the height of Charlie’s sense of being objectified; it leads him to assert his independence by running away from the conference with Algernon.

4. I wasn’t his son. That was another Charlie. Intelligence and knowledge had changed me, and he would resent me—as the others from the bakery resented me—because my growth diminished him. I didn’t want that.

Explanation for Quotation 4 >>

This passage comes from Progress Report 14, when Charlie goes to visit his father, Matt, hoping to talk with him and learn more about his own childhood. However, Matt does not recognize Charlie, and Charlie cannot bring himself to tell Matt who he really is. This reluctance emphasizes the feeling of split identity Charlie experiences as he grows smarter. When Charlie notes his intelligence increasing, he starts to have a sense that the “other” Charlie—his former mentally disabled self—watches over him, remaining present in the back of his mind. In this quotation, Charlie realizes why he feels he cannot and should not reveal his identity to Matt: Charlie is no longer that “other” self that he imagines, and therefore is no longer the same Charlie who was Matt’s son.

Though Charlie longs to connect to and understand his past, he realizes that he has traveled too far to be able to present himself as the same person he used to be. He believes that rather than being happy for his son’s massive gains in intelligence, Matt would feel betrayed if he were to discover that the articulate and bright man before him is Charlie. Charlie thinks that Matt would feel “diminished” by Charlie’s intelligence, not just because Charlie is now far smarter than Matt is, but also because Matt invested so much energy into relating to his son as a mentally retarded boy. For years, Matt dealt with the difficulty of having a retarded son, and he also faced the greater difficulty of trying to persuade his irrational wife to accept Charlie’s disability. Charlie fears that if a new, brilliant Charlie were to come along all these years later, Matt would feel that he had wasted all of his emotional energy and might even feel cheated. Charlie is effectively two people now, but neither person can have a whole life or a whole history.

5. P.S. please tel prof Nemur not to be such a grouch when pepul laff at him and he would have more frends. Its easy to have frends if you let pepul laff at you. Im going to have lots of frends where I go.

Explanation for Quotation 5 >>

These words constitute Charlie’s second-to-last postscript in his final progress report. Having decided to go live at the Warren State Home and cut himself off from all the people he has known, Charlie writes farewells to Alice and Dr. Strauss, but he saves a special word of advice for Nemur. Throughout the novel, Nemur is portrayed as a humorless and intensely career-focused man lacking in human compassion. For a time, at the height of his genius, Charlie’s own intellectual self-absorption threatens to turn him into a similarly cold individual. Upon discovering that his bakery coworkers used to tease him for sport when he was mentally retarded, Charlie becomes understandably angry and embittered, hating the idea that he was the subject of such mockery.

Unlike Charlie, Nemur has not been the target of cruel jokes, but he is nonetheless insecure and fears any challenge to his authority. Near the end of the novel, Charlie comes to learn that intellectual superiority is not the most important goal of a human life. He is able to steer himself away from becoming like Nemur, learning to love and forgive other people. Now, in this report, written after he has fully reverted to his original state, Charlie tries to pass on some of what he has learned to Nemur. Although Charlie is no longer capable of articulately expressing his emotional discoveries to Nemur, his words nonetheless ring with the truth of experience. Nemur would indeed have “more frends” if he were not so focused on maintaining a pointless sense of superiority. Charlie finds that, despite the vast intellectual gulf that separates him from Nemur, the lessons he has learned apply just as much to an esteemed scientific researcher as they do to a simpleminded man confined by mental disability.

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lunes, 21 de junio de 2010

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Billy Pilgrim

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Charlie Gordon

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