Flowers for Algernon tells the story of Charlie Gordon, a man in his early thirties with the intellectual capacity of a young child. The narrative is expressed through his “progris riports.” Charlie writes these journal entries for an experiment in which researchers perform an operation on his brain. The procedure is intended to increase human intelligence. Professor Nemur, the head researcher, feels apprehensive about choosing him as the human test subject, because, as Charlie writes in one entry