Analysis Of Flowers For Algonnon By Platos Flowers For...

In â€Å"Allegory of the Den† by Plato, he writes about prisoners chained in a cave. They all believe in one shadow, without any other truth contradicting them. But one day a prisoner was set free and let out of the cave. This prisoner sees the â€Å"sun† or the real truth, which is hard to believe at first, but once the truth is accepted the prisoner can’t believe they thought something any other way. In â€Å"Flowers for Algernon† by Daniel Keyes, this story has the same set up. Charlie Gordon had always thought that he was treated equal to his friends and colleagues. However after the operation is complete and Charlie gains intelligence, he begins to realize that they never believed him to be equal, but more as an inferior human compared to the†¦show more content†¦At first, Charlie went about his business as he would normally do, working in the factory, but as time passed Charlie realized that he was never friends with Joe Carp and Frank Reill y or remotely close to being taken seriously. This comes to be when they brought him to a bar and made a fool of him dancing but this time for Charlie, instead of laughing, he felt ashamed and upset: â€Å"Now I know what it means when they say ‘to pull a Charlie Gordon.’† (107.) This throws Charlie through a loop. He had been working alongside these people for a while now, truly believing that they were his friends only to find out he was only kept around for a laugh. This is when Charlie develops new feelings of embarrassment toward himself around others: â€Å"I never knew that Joe and Frank and the others liked to have me around all the time to make fun of me†¦ I’m ashamed.† (107.) This is upsetting because he thought when someone laughed at him, it meant they were your friends. Sadly it all turned out to be a lie, just like when the prisoner sees the sun and realizes that their past belief was far from the truth. Now that Charlie is intelligent, there was no way to return into the original cave and belief that Charlie had true friends. So he decided to move on and come to terms with the fact that true friends don’t make fun of someone because of a disability. Charlie now knows that friends should support people and try to make them feel welcomed. However, a couple days after Charlies