Being mentally challenged would be hard not for the individual, but also for the people that aid them in their everyday life. Those who are not exposed to this reality can never understand how hard it would be to live with a mental deficiency, let alone to work with or care for those afflicted with one. In the novel, Flowers for Algernon, Daniel Keyes demonstrates that nothing can be made to be perfect in this world, and all there is to do is deal with it and live life to the fullest. He shows that changing Charlie's intelligence was not really worth the cost of experimentation, time and effort put into this operation. It was not meant to be for Charlie to be a genius. Throughout the novel, there is proof of positives and negatives about…show more content… With the initial success of the experimental surgery, Charlie can clearly and vividly recall dreams, memories and his family. Charlie quickly desires intelligence, and he develops that. Charlie was never literate - he always struggled with that ever since he was a little boy. However as he gains his mental capacities, he sees that his co-workers would just make fun of him. He starts to rationalize that his new abilities earn him the same ridicule as his deficiencies did. It’s a positive but hurtful thing that he now knows that they would just take advantage of him. He also now knows that, that's not how to treat someone who cannot help the way they are; “Joe Carp said ‘ Hey look where Charlie had his operashun what did they do Charlie put some brains in… Then Frank Reilly said ‘What did you do Charlie open a door the hard way.’ That made me laff”(Keyes 22). Charlie is now intelligent because of the operation and finally gets to have what he always wanted. Charlie has more positives about his operation, but what he had to go through to get this intelligence was not worth what was put into