Connections

While I was reading Jon, I kept on feeling something was familiar... what do you call that, rendez-vous or something? Anyways, during our class discussion, we discussed how the story reminded us of other short stories/books, like the Junie B. Jones collection, I think someone said "A Series of Unfortunate Events", but for me this book reminded me of the book "Flowers for Algernon" (I book talked this last year and I bet I've talked about it in a previous blog post).

Note: there will be spoilers in this blog post if you're going to read "Flowers for Algernon".

I'll give you a brief overview: Flowers for Algernon is about a boy who is very eager to learn but has mental disabilities that impair him from even being able to form the simplest sentences. However, a surgeon came along who had an idea about performing some complicated neurosurgery that will get rid of these disabilities. They try the surgery on the narrator, and he indeed becomes smart -- one indication of that is that he reads "Paradife Loft" for fun (and yes I know a lot of you guys... let's just say didn't really like it). Eventually, he becomes so smart to the point that he passes the intelligence of the surgeons who did the surgery on him. Before his surgery, though, the surgeons tried the same thing with a lab rat named Algernon. The narrator finds that Algernon's mental ability to deteriorate over time, and he finds that the increase in intelligence from the surgery is directly proportional to the time elapsed: in other words, if the surgery makes you super smart, you will deteriorate in a short amount of time, and vice versa. Soon after, Algernon dies, and the narrator puts flowers on the grave. Hence the title.

Now, as the Narrator's intelligence starts to fade away, his language changes. In the beginning, his words are garbled, but after the surgery his sentences become increasingly complex... but then his sentences start to degrade near the end of the book. It is specifically this part of the book that Sander's "Jon" reminds me of: when Charlie's (the narrator of "Flowers for Algernon") language starts to fade, we see traces of him trying to use complex language, but ultimately failing. Similar to Jon's narration, we get the jist of what Charlie's trying to say, but it is obviously wrong, such as when he says "trumpet cart".

Another similarity to the two characters is that they both have had some kind of neurological modification - this seems self explanatory, but just to be clear (for those of you who forgot to read "Jon"), Charlie got a brain surgery and Jon got a metal shaft stuck into his neck that stored advertisements (I still don't understand why... I mean I guess its a utopia so I can't judge?). Again, what really stood out to me the most was the language, which is arguably the most fascinating part of both stories. The fact that both characters had some obscure memory of what these idioms are supposed to be like but can't totally execute them properly just makes me link together so strongly. And finally, both stories ended up pretty depressing for me, which I'm pretty used to by now considering all the books we've read this semester...

As for some overarching theme that many blog posts have... to be honest I really don't have any: this is just an observation that I made with a book I've read previously (and is arguably my favorite book). If you guys don't feel relatable to my feelings in this post... I understand -- after all, we are not required to read "Flowers for Algernon", though maybe it should be put into the 20th century Novel course *hint hint*.