Daniel Keyes, the author of the book Flower’s for Algernon, uses the story of Adam and Eve as a symbol of Charlie`s journey. The story of Adam and Eve is mentioned by Fanny from the bakery and nurse Hilda early in the book when she says ``And she said mabey they got no rite to make me smart because if god wantid me to be smart he would have made me born that way. And what about Adam and Eve and the sin with the tree of nowlege and the eating the appel and the fall.`` Although Charlie doesn`t have the mental capacity to understand, Daniel Keyes is foreshadowing the fall of Charlie from great knowledge. Adam and Eve are also alluded to again when Charlie is reading John Milton`s novel Paradise Lost. The story bears symbolic resemblance to Charlie`s journey from retard to genius. In the story of Adam and Eve, they eat from the tree of knowledge, which in turn costs them their innocence and also results in their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. In the same way that the forbidden fruit brings knowledge to Adam and Eve, Charlie`s operation gives him the intelligence to understand the world in a way he never did before. In the biblical account of the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve lose their innocence and acquire knowledge upon eating the fruit. This is very much like the transformation of Charlie with the operation that brings him intelligence but also a loss of innocence. Charlie loses his sexual virginity and undergoes behavioural and emotional changes as he becomes increasingly bitter and cold. Hilda and Fanny when she says ``If you`d read your Bible, Charlie, you`d know that it`s not meant for a man to know more than was given to him to know by the Lord in the first place. The fruit of that tree was forbidden to man,`` is implying that Charlie, like Adam and Eve, has defied God`s will by becoming more intelligent. Charlie`s discovery that artificial intelligence does not last implies that God or nature abhors unnatural intelligence. However, the author merely put the idea into the readers head and he allows us to make our own decisions about whether Charlie deserved the fate of mental regression.
Lindsay MacLean
