Hasn't anybody read "Flowers for Algernon"?

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I asked this in the "anti AS cure " cowardice thread.

Please WP people tell me what you thought of the book?

yep, a NUMBER have! They also made it into a movie. I read the story, and watched the movie. I liked both, and liked the various messages. What about it?

Loved it. Deeply sympathised with Charley and the mouse, Algernon.

I read it when I was younger.

I didn't understand it,
but Charlie's behavior is very Aspie before & after his treatments.

Charlie was aspie ONLY in having the innocence, and social retardation, but that was because he WAS MR, and was only BEFORE the treatments. Afterwards, you get the idea that maybe he would become a scientist or something. You should read it again, it isn't hard to understand.

...Yes , re-read it recently , more later !

Read it in the 8th grade. Liked it a lot. I kind of felt like I was reading about myself the whole time because sometimes I can relate to feeling ret*d, sometimes like a genius.

Well, I was in 5th grade at the time.

Read it in 8th grade too. There was movie based on it too, Charly. I guess they made another one with original title, Flowers for Algernon.

I haven't thought about that one in years... I think the last time I did, I wished Algernon and The Brain had gotten together and taken over the world... Ah..... are you pondering what I'm pondering, Pinky?

I looked up the entry at Wikipedia and found a movie made in 1999, Molly. Molly is autistic and left in her brother's care. He decides to get her an experimental operation to make her "normal". Like in Flowers for Algernon, she becomes "normal" and then regresses to her previous state. It seems like a cross between Flowers and Rainman.

"What about it?"

Well you see how he saw the AS/NT inconsistency of things, and how it upset him. I think he was AS as he was becoming smarter, realizing peoples inconsistencies, and becoming angry at the double standards and "lies".

Theyre talking a lot about cures over at "Cure Cowardice" thread, I just thought it applied.

Something they don't talk about in the thread is what if you were cured in the other direction, by becoming mentally retardted instead of fully NeuroTypical. "Ignorance is Bliss" especially in "Flowers"

Would you want to give up AS at he cost of your intillect? Like Charlie had to?

It was a best seller short story, book, and movie. As is so many movies about "unique" people. "Revenge of the Nerds" "Forrest Gump", "Napoleon Dynamite."

Why does the public at large idolize these characters on screen and yet treat us like social lepers in reality?

WHY?

You're right about that! I forgot about that part. 8-(



Actually, some of the AS people DO at least IMPLY that!



The resounding response here has been ******NO*******(save for maybe 10%)



Well, they don't idolize most of them.

Napoleon Dynamite didn't seem very good. I didn't get that!
Forrest Gump was an idiot that just lucked into everything. LUCKILY, his kid ended up ok.
The nerds, outside of a few, were generally misfits. Frankly, I liked them little more than the jocks.

I read it in either my junior or senior year of high school, can't remember which, and I don't remember much about the book either.

Read it again!

please.

Other than being an analogy to the Cure topic, I don't see too much similar between Asperger's and NT in this story. The rapid change in intellect (and its subsequent relationship complications) is akin to someone's rapid change in income. I don't see the (hypothetical) change from AS to NT bringing about the same types of complications.
Charly was always an outsider, whether he was "ret*d" or "genius". He just didn't seem to know it until people acted angry at him.

Outsiders or underdogs are received well on screen because they end up succeeding in popular ways. They prove the point, they win the game, they play the piano well. Whatever it is that endears them, is socially acceptable and meant to manipulate the public into liking them.

Snowflake doesn't seem popular, Charly was seen as a tragedy, Temple Grandin was apparently approached for a movie deal but she lacked romance, so it was abandoned. (I believe in favor for A Beautiful Mind, which its romance was doctored and sanitized)