Flowers for Algernon takes places in New York during the 1960s. This was also around the same time Daniel Keyes wrote the book. People with disabilities like Charlie are fighting for their rights and are slowly gaining some powers and freedom. Although Charlie didn't participate in this fight for equality among all the disabled, he did fight for himself. Charlie mostly stayed out of the big-city public eye. Living in New York placed extreme pressure on Charlie. Society pushed their superiority on everyone to have a "normal" status.
When Charlie first visits the Beekman Lab, he describes to us what we would expect to be a normal lab. He takes a series of tests in "that same place but a different little testing room," then heads on over to a room with lots of cages that "had a funny smell like old garbage" (6-7). Charlie is about to learn that his primary impression of the clean laboratory is just an illusion. Instead, he gets a peek inside the unhinged University of Beekman.
Charlie doesn't seem all that interested in the Big Apple until he finally makes a break along with Algernon from the Beekman group in Chicago. After he moves back, he sees everything so differently: "New York! All the things I've read about it! Gotham…the melting pot…Baghdad-on-the-Hudson" (171). Charlie then rents an apartment and starts exploring the city he never got a …show more content…
Charlie is to go to this laboratory for checkups and tests every once and a while. The mood that is established inside the lab at the beginning of the novel is in a way humorous because of Charlie's strange behavior. Eventually, the seriousness of the mood deepens. Charlie's attitude changes and the setting effects the way he acts. For example, when Charlie is not in the lab he seems to be more open. He proves this point when he tells Ms. Kinnian that he loves her. Where in the lab, he obeys orders and does what the professors ask of
When Charlie first visits the Beekman Lab, he describes to us what we would expect to be a normal lab. He takes a series of tests in "that same place but a different little testing room," then heads on over to a room with lots of cages that "had a funny smell like old garbage" (6-7). Charlie is about to learn that his primary impression of the clean laboratory is just an illusion. Instead, he gets a peek inside the unhinged University of Beekman.
Charlie doesn't seem all that interested in the Big Apple until he finally makes a break along with Algernon from the Beekman group in Chicago. After he moves back, he sees everything so differently: "New York! All the things I've read about it! Gotham…the melting pot…Baghdad-on-the-Hudson" (171). Charlie then rents an apartment and starts exploring the city he never got a …show more content…
Charlie is to go to this laboratory for checkups and tests every once and a while. The mood that is established inside the lab at the beginning of the novel is in a way humorous because of Charlie's strange behavior. Eventually, the seriousness of the mood deepens. Charlie's attitude changes and the setting effects the way he acts. For example, when Charlie is not in the lab he seems to be more open. He proves this point when he tells Ms. Kinnian that he loves her. Where in the lab, he obeys orders and does what the professors ask of