Team+Accelerated

Team Accelerated Katlyn Armstrong Savannah McDermott

//__Team Accelerated__//

In __//Flowers for Algernon//__, Charlie needs the complete the Rorschach Test in order to contribute to the observations before and after his big operation. Charlie didn't know what to do when it came to completing the test. He always had the feeling that he had 'failed'. Burt Would give Charlie the test and ask him, "Now i want you to look at this card. What might it be? What do you see on this card? People see all sorts of things in these ink blots. Tell me what it might be for you- what it makes you think of?" (Keyes 56).

What do you see in the card? Will you fail just like Charlie? -Katlyn

How Mentally Handicapped Adults Were Treated Then & Now

Back in the 1950's mentally handicapped adults were put in insane asylums. They had very poor medical, and horrible drug treatments. They had very few chances of learning and coexisting with “normal” people. Their life expectancy was right around 40 years of age.

Now we have many things for mentally handicapped. We have schools they can attend, along with special housing so they can live like normal people. We now have better medical treatment, better prescriptions and more knowledge about the brain and how it functions. Their life expectancy is right around 60 years of age.

-Savannah

This is a graph of how many mental disabilities there were from 1993 until 1997. Imagine how many there were in the 60's and how many people were put into asylums and kept hidden from the real world. I posted this graph so you could take a look and make your own comparisons.

-Katlyn

The "Window"

In the novel, Charlie makes several referances about a window. I think that the window can symbolize Charlies flashbacks as a child, or teenager, and it can also represent how he thinks the 'old Charlie' is watching him. There is one specific point in the book when Charlie goes to visit his mother. All he ever wanted as a child was to please his parents and make them proud. He wanted to be smart like all the other children. As Charlie is walking up to his old home where he was raised, he has a certain flashback. For example, "There were no children playing on Marks Street- not at all like the mental picture i had brought with me of children everywhere, and Charlie watching them through the front window (strange that most of my memories of the street are framed by the window, with me always inside watching the children play) (Keyes 259)." Also, Charlie Gordon would always get the feeling that the 'old Charlie' was watching him whenever love was involved with Alice or Fay. Charlie says, "For one moment i had the cold feeling he was watching. Over the arm of the couch, I caught a glimpse of his face staring back at me through the dark beyond the window," (Keyes 209). How would you feel if 'someone' was always watching you?

-Katlyn