If not for that none of us would have to grow old and be sick and die, ( Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes, pg 75)." And then the it is alluded to again in Charlie's reading of John Milton's Paradise Lost of the evils of Adam and Eve. This bears the symbolic parallel of Charlie's journey from retardation to genius and Adam and Eve eatting the fruit from the tree of knowledge, costing them their innocence and causing them to be exiled from the Garden of Eden. As the forbidden fruit opened the awarness of the world to Adam and Eve, Charlie's operation granted him the mental capacity to view the world with a sharp perspective. The operation would allow him to realize that as long as people could laugh and appear clever at his expense, they could diminish their inadequacies. This lead to Charlie innocence fading away, as well as, a warmth, an openness, a kindness that made everyone like him and like to have him around. As his intelligence increases Charlie grows cold, smug, and disagreeable. The more he learns about the world the more he finds himsel aloof. Not only would this artifical intelligence harden his heart but it would open him up to exploring his sexuality. Through flashbacks, which Charlie tells from a third person point of view rather than the first person point of view carried out through the rest of the novel, displays that Charlie reguards Charlie the moron and the genius as two completely seperate people, of his childhood it is apparent that Charlie's mother, Rose Gordon, punished him for any signs of sexual interest, through learning of his past charlie was able to understand his fear of the growing female companionship of Alice Kinnian. Professor Nemur tells Charlie at the outset of the experiment that if he did gain intelligence it may not be permanant; later, Charlie has a memory of his young sister, Norma, obnoxiously threatening to lose her own intelligence and finally Algernon's decline in intelligence all foreshadows Charlie's rapid deterioration.
