Before the operation Charlie is childlike, eager to please, wants to have friends and is willing to work hard. He wants to be “smart like other people” so they would treat him as an equal. The operation however doesn’t change him instantly, it changes him gradually over time. He becomes critical of other people around him, especially the doctors who have treated him as a guinea-pig. He does however love his newly acquired intelligence, quickly becoming very well versed in many areas. Unfortunately the progress from sub-normal intelligence to genius disrupts his life in many ways. It makes him unfit for his job at the factory being forced to quit, he even becomes too smart for the women he realises he loves, Miss Kinnian.
When Charlie realises that he will lose his intelligence he starts working hard to find out how long he has left and the determination of the old Charlie comes back. He wants desperately to hold on to some remnants of his genius especially the ability to read and write “please let me keep some of it.”
In the end he can no longer live with the people who knew him when he was smart so he decides to move to New York and start again somewhere else away from everyone he ever knew.
The way that the story is written I feel has significant meaning in the development of Charlie up to and after his turning point. The entire story is written in the form of Charlie’s progress reports in the first person narrative. From the beginning of the story it is clear by Charlie’s poor spelling that he is of below average intelligence, but as the story progress he moves on from his terrible spelling, as it begins to improve after the operation and he begins to get smarter he begins to use more and more complex words and punctuation. Unfortunately this was not to last, as the effects of the operation begin to wear off his spelling returns gradually to the simple state it was at the start of the story. At the beginning of the story Charlie uses no imagery, mostly due to the fact that at this point in the story the author is trying to convey to the reader that Charlie has no imagination, that also changes as the story progress as he begins to use imagery more and more. Also Daniel makes use of Climaxes and Anti-Climaxes in the story switching Charlie’s life from various high points to substantially more low points as he develops, an example of this would be “I’m in love with Miss Kinnian” a happy moment I feel you would agree, but it immediately followed by “I’ve quit my job,” bringing the story back to a low point.
Some of Charlie’s qualities also substantially add to Charlie’s development, one of the main qualities to be noticed is his determination, from the beginning he wanted to have the operation no matter what and always worked his absolute hardest to be smart, and when he is a genius he showed great determination into his research of his intelligence loss. Before Charlie had the operation he attended evening classes taught by Miss Kinnian for slow adults, it is here that she him that he is her “bestest pupil” because he “tried the hardest and really wanted to learn” this shows that Charlie has a great deal of determination.
The “ignorance is bliss” thing that I mentioned before could be used to look into how Charlie begins to look at other retarded people; “his kind” after he is smart. At first Charlie is treated badly and made fun of by his peers at work but doesn’t realise it, he believes that these people are his friends and enjoy his company, however after the operation he begins realise what has been going on and starts to understand what peoples opinions are of him. Later in the story when Charlie is a genius, he is eating dinner in a café when someone drops some plates, another person in the café makes fun of the boy for it and everyone in the café laughs including Charlie, but soon Charlie realises that the boy is retarded and they are laughing at him because of that, he then gets furious the customers and staff, but more importantly himself, he says; “I felt ashamed for both of us,” this quote and this part of the story shows just how much Charlie has changed from the simple person he was at the beginning.
