Episode 67, Flowers for Algernon (Part IV - The Meaning)

The Panpsycast Philosophy Podcast

Jack Symes | Andrew Horton, Oliver Marley, and Rose de Castellane

Euthanasia, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Existentialism, Marxism, Kant, Ethics, Davidpapineau, Dennett, Marx, Evilgodchallenge, Cosmological, Mind, Consciousness, Courses, Nagasawa, Education, Johnstuartmill, Jeremybentham, Aristotle, Ocr, Camus, Josephfletcher, Conscience, Society & Culture, Kantianethics, Philosophy

4.8 • 604 Ratings

🗓️ 20 October 2019

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

 Report: March 2nd

 After the successes we have had with Algernon, and with much deliberation, I have officially chosen our first research subject. Charlie Gordon, 32, was recommended to us by Alice Kinian from the Beekman School for Retarded Adults and she has assured us of his desire to increase his intellect.

 I have scheduled for Charlie to come to the lab over the next few days where Burt Selden will run some preliminary psych tests. We are also going to test his mental flexibility with a few maze puzzles with Algernon. All that remains is the consent of a family member to grant permission for the operation. According to Alice Kinian, his sister Norma might be the most appropriate person to seek out.

 Providing there are no warning signs during the testing, and consent is provided, we will be on the cusp of something truly ground-breaking. All these years of hard work will be vindicated and the trust of my wife and those who fund me will have been justified. Dare I say it, I might be remembered amongst the pantheon of great scientists.

 Strauss has insisted that we keep a close eye on his mental state and emotional growth. I am inclined to agree but feel we cannot be held fully accountable for the man’s personality. The success or failure of this experiment will rest on his increased intelligence, or lack thereof.

 One thing is certain, if the experiment works, Charlie Gordon’s life will change forever.

 Professor Harold Nemur

Contents

Part I. Life and Context.

Part II. The Story: The Rise of Charlie Gordon.

Part III. The Story: The Fall of Charlie Gordon.

Part IV. The Meaning.

Part V. Further Analysis and Discussion.

Links

Flowers for Algernon, Daniel Keyes (Amazon).

Algernon, Charlie, and I: A Writer’s Journey, Daniel Keyes (Amazon).

Charly (1968), Full Movie (YouTube).

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Pan, pan, pan, pan, pan, pan, pan, pan, pan, pan, pan, pan, pan, pan, pan, pan, pan,
0:07.0	Scicast.
0:08.0	Part four, the meaning. So, as you can probably imagine, we've been absolutely dying to get into some of the symbolism, some of the philosophy and some of the meaning for flowers for Algernon. After giving that reading in the last two sections, we touched on a few of the little bits in part one, talking about Daniel Keyes' life, and we're not going to spend too much time in picking his reasons for doing them.
0:41.0	He leaves us hanging in his biography saying, in his autobiography, saying that he doesn't want
0:45.6	to have a conversation about the meaning because he feels like that's not the role of the author.
0:49.3	That's our job here and now to pick out some of the philosophy.
0:53.5	So I guess a nice open question, which we can
0:55.9	start with is I'm genuinely interested to know what you guys think, what you took as like the
1:01.5	main meaning and the main theme of the book itself. I'd like to just pick apart a couple of key
1:07.3	interesting bits that often get picked up by well pretty much everybody right like
1:12.5	i don't think there's much hidden under the surface here but there are some interesting things
1:16.7	nonetheless so one of the things i wanted to mention first off and being that we are a philosophy
1:21.1	podcast is that actually the book opens up with a passage from plato's republic right like it so he, before he even starts the progress reports, there is a little section about like,
1:33.7	like, I can't remember the exact bit, but it's about like eyes adjusting to the light.
1:37.4	And that how once you've got adjusted to the light, going back to the darkness,
1:41.6	you would also struggle to adjust, right?
1:43.8	And you can see how
1:45.6	that even that just element of light and dark get used a lot throughout the text right the amount of
1:51.9	times that like we perhaps didn't stress it while while we were doing the dialogue but he mentions
1:57.4	a couple of bits about kind of coming into the, into the light, and that he
2:02.3	doesn't want to go back to the darkness. He associates Charlie, as in like the old Charlie,
2:08.0	as being in the dark. And that gets repeated quite a bit.
	...

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