Flowers for Algernon

I am afraid. Not of life, or death, or nothingness, but of wasting it as if I had never been. And as I start through the opening, I feel the pressure around me, propelling me in violent wavelike motions toward the mouth of the cave.

It’s too small! I can’t get through!

And suddenly I am hurled against the walls, again and again, and forced through the opening where the light threatens to burst my eyes. Again, I know I will pierce the crust into that holy light. More than I can bear. Pain as I have never known, and coldness, and nausea, and the great buzzing over my head flapping like a thousand wings. I open my eyes, blinded by the intense light. And flail the air and tremble and scream.

I came out of it at the insistence of a hand shaking me roughly. Dr. Strauss.

“Thank God,” he said, when I looked into his eyes. “You had me worried.” I shook my head. “I’m all right.”

“I think maybe that’s all for today.”

I got up and swayed as I regained my perspective. The room seemed very small. “Not only for today,” I said. “I don’t think I should have any more sessions. I don’t want to see any more.” 198 He was upset, but he didn’t try to talk me out of it. I took my hat and coat and left. And now-Plato’s words mock me in the shadows on the ledge behind the flames: “.. the men of the cave would say of him that up he went and down he came without his eyes....

October S-Sitting down to type these reports is difficult, and I can’t think with the tape recorder going. I keep putting it off for most of the day, but I know how important it is, and I’ve got to do it. I’ve told myself I won’t have dinner until I sit down and write something-anything. Professor Nemur sent for me again this morning. He wanted me at the lab for some tests, the kind I used to do. At first I figured it was only right, because they’re still paying me, and it’s important to have the record complete, but when I got down to Beekman and went through it all with Burt, I knew it would be too much for me.

First it was the paper and pencil maze. I remembered how it was before when I learned to do it quickly, and when I raced against Algernon. I could tell it was taking me a lot longer to solve the maze now. Burt had his hand out to take the paper, but I tore it up instead and threw the pieces into the waste basket.

“No more. I’m through running the maze. I’m in a blind alley now, and that’s all there is to it.”

He was afraid I’d run out, so he calmed me down. “That’s all right, Charlie. Just take it easy.”

“What do you mean `take it easy’? You don’t know what it’s like.”

“No, but I can imagine. We all feel pretty sick about “Keep your sympathy. Just leave me alone.”

He was embarrassed, and then I realized it wasn’t his fault, and I was being lousy toward him. “Sorry I blew up,” I said. “How’s everything going? Got your thesis finished yet?”

He nodded. “Having it retyped now. I’ll get my Ph. D. in February”

“Good boy.” I slapped him on the shoulder to show him I wasn’t angry with him. “Keep plugging. Nothing like an education. Look, forget what I said before. I’ll do anything else you want. Just no more mazes-that’s all.”

“Well, Nemur wants a Rorschach check.”

“To see what’s happening down deep? What does he expect to find?” I must have looked upset, because he started to back off. “We don’t have to. You’re here voluntarily. If you don’t want to—”

“That’s all right. Go ahead. Deal out the cards. But don’t tell me what you find out.” He didn’t have to.

I knew enough about the Rorschach to know that it wasn’t what you saw in the cards that counted, but how you reacted to them. As wholes, or parts, with movement or just motionless figures, with special attention to the color spots or ignoring them, with lots of ideas or just a few stereotyped responses.

“It’s not valid,” I said. “I know what you’re looking for. I know the kind of responses I’m supposed to have, to create a certain picture of what my mind is like. All I’ve got to do is…” He looked up at me, waiting. “All I’ve got to do is… ”

But then it hit me like a fist against the side f my head that I didn’t remember what I had to do. It was as if I had been looking at the whole thing clearly on the blackboard of my mind, but when I turned to read it, part of it had been erased and the rest didn’t make sense. At first, I refused to believe it. I went through the cards in a panic, so fast that I was choking on my words. I wanted to tear the inkblots apart to make them reveal themselves. Somewhere in those inkblots there were answers I had known just a little while ago. Not really in the inkblots, but in the part of my mind that would give form and meaning to them and project my imprint on them.