Charlie is going downhill. He is depressed and thinks of suicide. Then
thoughts of the "other" Charlie make him ashamed - "His
life is not mine to throw away. I've just borrowed it for a while and
now I'm being asked to return it." He keeps reminding himself he's
the only person to have such experiences and realizes that he must document
them as his contribution to mankind. Charlie works very hard and avoids
sleep. He plays loud music in order to keep awake and the neighbors call
the police. His relationship with them becomes hostile, but he doesn't
even notice the change.
Charlie has an abrasive session of therapy with Strauss. Charlie is irritable and constantly tries to provoke Strauss. He compares him to a barber who gives "ego shampoos," and asks whether an "idiot" can have an "id?" Strauss lets him rave, and refuses to be provoked. Charlie lies back on his couch and has a strange experience. He sees "a blue-white glow from the walls and the ceiling gathering into a shimmering ball...forcing itself into my brain...and my eyes.... I have the feeling of floating...and yet without looking down I know my body is still here on the couch..." He feels as if he is released from the earth. "And then, as I know I am about to pierce the crust of existence, like a flying fish leaping out of the sea, I feel the pull from below." Unwillingly, Charlie is pulled back to earth and comes to consciousness. He wonders whether it is a hallucination or is it the kind of experience described by the mystics? He returns to reality feeling as if he is being thrown against the walls of a cave, beyond which is a "holy light" which is more than he can bear. He is filled with "pain" and "coldness and nausea" and he screams.
Charlie ends the therapy session, telling Strauss that he won't come
back. He is immensely depressed and is haunted by Plato's words, "--the
men of the cave would say of him that up he went and down he came without
his eyes..." They seem to reflect the bizarre see-saw that his life
has been, and the dreaded shrinking of his intelligence.
Charlie still struggles with his reports. He goes unwillingly to the
Beekman lab, as he feels that he owes it to the team there. But, he balks
at the grind of the same old mazes he used to do with Algernon. He notices
that it is taking him much longer now than it did before to solve a maze.
Burt puts him through the Rorschach inkblots, but he realizes that he
has forgotten what to do. He becomes incoherent, then tells Burt that
he is not a guinea pig and therefore should be left alone. He rejects
Burt's sympathy saying, "we don't happen to belong on the same level.
I passed your floor on the way up and now I'm passing it on the way down,
and I don't think I'll be taking this elevator again." He then rushes
out of the university.
Strauss visits Charlie but Charlie refuses to open the door to him.
Charlie tries to read Paradise Lost' which he loved, but he can't make
sense' of it. He relives the awful past when his mother had tried to teach
him reading and had threatened to beat it into him until he learns.'
In anguish, Charlie breaks the binding and rips the pages out. He leaves
it lying on the floor "its torn white tongues were laughing because
I couldn't understand what they were saying." He prays, "I've
got to try to hold onto some of the things I've learned. Please God, don't
take it all away."
Charlie wanders about at night, aimlessly. He first stands on the streets,
looking "at faces." Once, a policeman takes him home when he
is lost. Another time, a pimp cheats him of ten dollars.
One morning, Charlie walks home to find Alice asleep there. She refuses
all attempts to put her off, and insists that she has come, "because
there's still time. And I want to spend it with you." Charlie says
there's only enough time for him to spend with himself. She refuses to
pity him, saying that, the future "was no secret" and intellectually,
he is at her level now. She reaches out determinedly and this time the
psychological barriers don't go up. Charlie loves her "with more
than my body." He feels he has "unwound the string she had given
me, and found my way out of the labyrinth to where she was." This
sexual experience is not simple - "it was being lifted off the earth,
outside fear and torment, being part of something greater than myself.
... We merged to re-create and perpetuate the human spirit." It reminds
him of the strange vision' he had experienced during his therapy with
Strauss. He finds a kind of comfort in knowing that what they have, "is
more than most people find in a lifetime."
Alice and Charlie go to a concert, but he finds he can't pay attention
for long. Alice's presence is a "bad thing" because it makes
him feel that he should fight his fate, "freeze" himself at
this level, and not lose her.
Alice tells Charlie he has blank spells when he lies around for days
and doesn't know her. He knows it is inevitable, but he can't help wondering
if he can fight the regression, fight against becoming like all those
at the Warren Home, like Charlie Gordon as he was. Charlie is in torment
as he thinks about all this.
Charlie wants to look up some reference in his Report on the "Algernon-Gordon
Effect" and discovers that, he can't even understand the report any
more. He is suffering and is angry at everything. Alice's attempts to
care for him and keep his home clean enrage him. The more she humors him,
the wilder he gets remembering how the staff at the Warren home patiently
humored the inmates. Charlie however is repentant when Alice weeps.
Charlie's physical activity is getting affected. He blames Alice and
prefers to think that her rearrangements are to blame. She responds with
patience and pity and this irritates him further. The only thing he enjoys
now is the T.V, which he watches all day and night. It is the "window"
through which he is doomed to watch life, always as the observer. He is
disgusted at giving in to drugging himself, "with this dishonest
stuff that's aimed at the child in me. Especially me, because the child
in me is reclaiming my mind." Yet, he wants to forget everything
that has happened to him as well. On finding a German research paper he
had used in his work, he is shattered to find that he can no longer read
German. All the languages he had learnt have been wiped clean from his
mind!
After a constant struggle over the deliberate mess he had made of his
apartment, Alice and Charlie have a final rave. Alice charges him with
"wallowing in his own filth and self-pity," of mindlessly watching
T.V and of snarling at people. She tells him that he was loved and respected
more when he was retarded, and had a sense of humor. Charlie finds it
increasingly hard to understand what she is saying. He accuses her of
pushing him as his mother used to, and asks to be left alone now that
he is "falling apart." Alice breaks down, then packs her bags
and leaves.
Charlie can't type any more. He broods over what Alice has said and
decides that, if he keeps learning new things while forgetting old ones,
he may not sink so fast. He starts reading feverishly at the library,
hoping "to keep moving upward, no matter what happened." Strauss
comes to see him. Charlie says that he can look after himself, and when
he feels he can't, he'll board a train for the Warren Home. Fay now avoids
him, she seems afraid of him. Only Mrs. Mooney, the landlady, visits him
with hot food. Charlie is sure that Strauss or Alice must have asked her
to do so.
Charlie reads, irrespective of the fact, whether or not he can understand.
He reads "Don Quixote" and has a constant feeling that he knew
the meaning behind the windmills, the castles and the dragons, but he
can't remember. He watches people from his window, and lies in bed most
of the time. He now finds it difficult to write the progress reports.
Clapsaddle, Diane. "TheBestNotes on A Long Way Gone".
TheBestNotes.com.
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