10/26/4

I got those damned jerking skeletons done in my Halloween maze this afternoon before heading off to work. Unusually rainy weather for this time of year. I'd expect a little, but it came down pretty good last week, and it's pouring again tonight. But those couple hours just before it rained, when the air was cool and humid and the wind was blowing, that's the kind of weather I like. The full-on hot Summer here in LA really sucks, in my opinion. I grew up in Michigan, and although I don't miss snow one bit, I do miss those cooler, windy days and the occaisional light rain.

Not too long ago, a friend asked me if I thought "The Logical Song" by Supertramp (which I'm quite familiar with) was based upon the story "Flowers For Algernon" by Daniel Keyes (which I was unfamiliar with, although it's appearently quite famous). At the time I had no way of knowing, not having read the story.

So my ears pricked up yesterday when my daughter asked if I'd ever read "Flowers For Algernon", which she was currently reading in her literature textbook. I sat down and read the short-story in half an hour. It's structured as journal entries by the main character, but the author later expanded it into a full novel, and it was made into a film in 1968, and a made-for-TV movie in 2000. It's a clever piece of psychological sci-fi. For those reading who are (as I was) unfamiliar with the story, I'll sum it up for you:

Charlie Gordon is a middle-aged man with an IQ of 68, but is strongly motivated to learn to the best of his ability. He's chosen for an experimental neuro-surgery that triples his IQ, and over the course of several weeks he rapidly learns to read and write better, then higher mathematics, then multiple languages, until he's so intelligent he makes the doctors doing the experiment jealous. Unfortunately, the process is found to be only temporary, and he rapidly loses his new intellect at the same rate he gained it. Algernon is the last of the white mice to undergo the surgery before it's performed on Charlie, and the two compete against each other completing mazes as a way to measure Charlie's development. When Algernon dies and Charlie is returned to his retarded state, his only wish is for flowers to be placed on Algernon's grave, thus the title.

The reason I bring all this up is that the story is more than just a clever sci-fi idea, starting with bad grammer and spelling that is slowly refined, then dropping in references to world literature and advanced calculus, then deteriorating these things back down to the poor spelling again. The story also plays the naivete of the character against those around him: the doctors, his teacher, his co-workers at the factory for which he's a janitor, until they have him fired out of fear of his new intelligence, one woman equating it to Eve and the forbidden fruit. The smarter he gets, the more he realizes people aren't what they seem, and the more jaded and angry it makes him, until he explodes at a restaurant full of patrons laughing at a retarded dishwasher who drops and breaks a stack of plates, seeing his former self reflected in the boy.

Forrest Gump and other films and stories follow a similar mentality: that low intelligence somehow equals innocence. That people who are stupid don't realize that cruel people are mocking them, and that they play along naively. But how do we really know this? Obviously, these authors needed to put themselves in the shoes of these characters, but are themselves too intelligent to accurately relate. I've known mentally challenged individuals, and they generally do have a much calmer and happier demeanor than most people. Is knowledge truly evil? As we gain knowledge of the truth of the world around us, is it only to come to realize how cruel, unfair and unforgiving Man's world is? Do all happy children eventually become miserable adults?

Knowledge is power, but ignorance is bliss. Food for thought.

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