Flowers for Algernon

Well, I just saw a play based on the book, and I almost cried. I want to read the book now.
It's about a mentally challenged man (Charlie) who participates in an experiment to make him smarter. At first, he is taken care of by Alice and has a job at a bakery, but he has a very low IQ and can't remember a lot of his past. After he has the surgery, he begins to get smarter, and in his progress reports he writes, he is writing neater and more properly and is using more advanced words, but he begins to remember his past which is haunting him. In his past, his mother would always say that he was a normal boy, but his father always thought she was pushing him too much when he needed help. Later, she gives birth to a girl. When Charlie would approach her, his mother would yell at him, saying that he was going to kill her, which he wasn't going to. Later, when his sister was 8, she never liked Charlie because of her friends teasing her. She would always blame him for everything, and his mother took her word. Later, his mother can't take it anymore, and demands that he should be sent to an institution. The father argues because he doesn't want to take him away just to give the daughter a normal life, but he ends up bringing him to the institution. They never visited, and the mother told the daughter that he died there. A few years later, his uncle (who dies) takes him out of the institution, and gets him a job at the bakery.
After he gets smarter, he finds out that some of the people at work have always been making fun of him because of his low intelligence. Soon, he is fired from the bakery because he is getting too smart, and the other workers don't like him anymore.
There's a lot in the middle, but I'm going to skip to near the end because I'm not that good at remembering all the details.
Anyways, his intellegence grows to that of a genius. Soon, he discovers a very bad flaw in the experiment. It turns out that the intelligence of both him and Algernon (the lab mouse that they are also testing) will deteriate at the rate they came to, meaning that he will go back to his normal self (mentally challenged). He later tries finding his parents. When he finds his father, he does not recognize him, and he cannot come to tell him who he is. Later, he comes to see his mother, who at first is scared something bad will happen, but Charlie explains that he is now smart. He gives a copy of his report that explains the experiments flaw for her to show to everyone who thought he could never do anything right. His sister later comes, and is surprised to see that it is Charlie, but is eager and very happy that he is there. She says that she has been taking care of her mother, and that she told her that Charlie had died. She really didn't want him to leave, but he had to. He said he would like to stay, but he had to go to a few conventions about the experiment. His mother than gets up and picks up a knife, and almost kills Charlie because she forgot the situation and thinks that Charlie was going to kill his sister. His sister than tells him about a time that he thinks he remembers about them jumping on the bed when they were young. She hit her head, and told their mother that "Charlie tried to kill me!" and their mother was furious at Charlie.
Later, Algernon becomes erratic and defiant, and loses his intelligence and dies. Charlie knows that this is going to happen to him. He breaks up with his girlfriend (read the book) because he doesn't want her to be sad when he isn't smart anymore and doesn't want her to worry anymore.
Soon, he loses his intelligence, and his writing goes back to how it originally was. He writes that he is still trying, but that he just can't always do everything as he could when he was smart. He says he wants to go to somewhere where no one knows about the experiment, because he thinks people would call him a freak.

I thought it was really sad, but the ending does leave a chance of him seeing his sister again, which he said he would try to see her again. Anyways, read the book, or see the movie (not as good as the book).
Also, they are making a new movie about it starring Will Smith. I might check it out, but it comes out in 3 years.

I read that in language arts
I like the way he spells some words

I read the short story in school. Im not sure how the book /movie is to the short story but every one in my class assumed he died in the end.

Chandler wrote:I read the short story in school. Im not sure how the book /movie is to the short story but every one in my class assumed he died in the end.

and they all lived happily ever after

Well, my sister just bought the book (yes, believe it or not, she's actually reading a book!), so I'll have to wait until she reads it and I'll see if it's still readable.

We read it in English class in October, I guess it was Ok. Not really my cup of tea though.