To begin with, I recall a conversation i had prior to reading this book. A friend asked me, ‘ why is intelligence so important, why do we hold it in such high regard ?’ I remarked rather thoughtlessly,’ well it is what distinguishes us from the rest of the animal kingdom, it is what makes us human.’ only after reading this did i realise how wrong I was!
Set in the new york of the 1960’s this book is the journal of Charlie Gordon. A case of phenylketonuria left untreated, he has been a retard most of his life, that is until he becomes the subject of a psychosurgical experiment – to restructure a part of his brain tissue, to make him intelligent. This book is a series of his progress reports. I think of it as a maze, very like the one we solve in our puzzle books. We start out easy, simple, until the burden of the rapidly firing neurons birth the twists and turns, complexities arise and all happiness drains.
Starting out a simple boy, happy boy, who laughs along when the world laughs at him, just wanting to make his teacher happy – Charlie turns into a frustrated, miserable genius, he finds out that reading every book in every language did not just push away every person in his life, learning and recollecting all the memories that he now understood to be trauma stole his happiness, this IQ that he so desired took away his humanity.
to quote charlie himself, “Intelligence is one of the greatest
human gifts. But all too often a search for knowledge drives out the search
for love. This is something else I’ve discovered for myself very recently. I
present it to you as a hypothesis: Intelligence without the ability to give and
receive affection leads to mental and moral breakdown, to neurosis, and
possibly even psychosis. And I say that the mind absorbed in and involved
in itself as a self-centered end, to the exclusion of human relationships, can
only lead to violence and pain.
When I was retarded I had lots of friends. Now I have no one. “
a significant detail to note, the experiment shoots his IQ from 60 to 200 yet it can’t make him emotionally mature. Of what use is knowing every theorem, when it can’t teach you compassion, when it can’t teach you love ?
Another point to note, this book explores themes of trauma and healing, its infliction, understanding and acceptance as well a variety of psychological concepts and theories readers would find interesting
I really wish everyone would read this book.
We’ve stopped questioning ourselves and take everything as we believe it to be, we’ve lost sight of what is important and we don’t care enough to find it again.
this book will make you question, it will make you care.
Tejaswini Pethe
