Flowers For Algernon

The things you find on the internet!  From 1961 the teleplay The Two Worlds of Charlie Gordon.  Based upon the science fiction short story Flowers for Algernon, it tells the story of a mentally handicapped man who is made hyper intelligent, only to lose his new found intelligence and revert to his prior state.  (The Algernon is the mouse who in the original experiment gained intelligence, for a mouse, only to lose it and to die from the experiment.)  The tale had an impact on Robertson who bought the rights and in 1968 starred in the academy award winning picture Charly.

The story I think hits home because it reflects the earthly life of so many of us.  Shakespeare wrote about The Seven Ages of Man in As You Like It:

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
5 His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms;
And then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
10 Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
15 Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
20 Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
25 And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything

Of course this life is but a prelude to our destinies beyond the grave, and for believers in Christ there is ample hope in the next life, no matter what our lot has been in this Vale of Tears.