“To be, or not to be,- that is the question:” (Shakespeare's Hamlet). Whether someone will pay to be intelligent for a time, or stay within their inability to understand the world around them. “Flowers for Algernon” a science fiction story by Daniel Keyes, follows the events from the life of a man by the name of Charlie Gordon who had to answer this very question. He did not have the same mental capacity of the average person, so he had the opportunity to rapidly gain intelligence. Ultimately he chose to take an operation to make himself smarter. Son after that, he started to lose the intelligence just as fast as he gained it while simultaneously becoming more unstable. Charlie should not have done the surgery because there were many side effects,…show more content… On April 30, he goes to work like he would on any other day, but he gets confronted by his boss, who hands Charlie a piece of paper. “...Mr. Donnegan showed me the petition. Eight hundred names, everyone in the factory… demanded that I be fired,” (Keyes 16). All of the employees at Charlie’s workplace are uncomfortable with the fact that he is gaining so much intelligence unnaturally. Eight hundred people demanded that Charlie go. This is a huge amount of people who are saying that they do not approve of the way Charlie has decided to upgrade himself. He once believes that he had many friends among his co-workers but he now realizes they don't like what he is trying to do. Once he starts to lose his gained knowledge, his emotional starts to worsen as well. Dr. Strauss goes to Charlie’s house almost every day, but, “... I told him I wouldn't see or speak to anybody,” (Keyes 25). He is pushing the people he used to hold in high regard away, even close friends like Miss Kinnian. When Charlie says he won't speak to anybody it is likely that he is having absolutely no contact of any kind with people at all. This is a terrible thing for Charlie to do because he is losing the people he once considered friends. Before the surgery, Charlie was happy when he talked and hung out with his