She tells Charlie that if God had wanted Charlie to be smart, God would have made him that way. The first nurse Charlie encounters after his surgery introduces this theme. Many people, including Charlie, discuss tampering with man's intelligence. Many overt references to this theme run throughout the novel. This "failure" symbolizes the ultimate failure in the concept of Man Playing God. Rather, readers witness the rebirth of the original Charlie. At the conclusion of Charlie's nine-month development, however, no new individual is born. A synonym for autumn is "fall," and that word, in the verb form, is what we witness in Charlie.Ĭharlie's personal odyssey spans a period of nine months, which is both a plot technique and a representation of the human gestation period (a period in which new life is developed and nurtured, culminating in the birth of a new individual). Autumn isn't death as symbolized by winter, but it is the loss of new growth and the beginning of regression. Autumn is the season that displays nature's decline. The progress reports, and our journey with Charlie, come to an end in the heart of autumn. Charlie's surgery takes place in the spring, a time of new beginnings, new growth, and re-birth. The novel's chronological timeline begins March 3 and ends November 21. The basic structural layout of the novel supports this theme. The central theme in Flowers for Algernon is Man Playing God.
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