Flowers for Algernon: Imagery 4 key examples

Before Charlie could read, books only held value for him as pretty or entertaining things to look at. The author uses visual imagery to show this when Charlie remembers “the pleasure of the brightly colored pictures in the comic book.” These vivid colors create a strong memory in Charlie’s mind, even if he cannot understand what the characters are saying to one another. The “strange forms of letters and words in the white balloons” show how the dialogue in the comic book once felt mysterious and inaccessible to him. He's also still unable to grasp the full context of the comic; because he couldn’t read it as a child, he can’t remember what the characters were saying as an adult. The author also introduces another metaphor when Charlie describes “the fuzzy cloud [that] comes and goes.” This “cloud” represents the confusion and the limitation Charlie felt in his childhood. Instead of describing a specific obstacle, Keyes lets the cloud stand for Charlie’s overall struggle to understand the world around him.

All of the visual imagery of this passage contrasts light and dark, “blackness” and brightness. When Charlie describes “the bright skyline on Central Park South,” the city lights stand out in a “honeycomb” against the dark sky. This image separates the brightness of the city and its lights from the darkness of the night sky around it. He knows that the lights signify other people who are awake and working, and he feels attuned to them, wishing he could “absorb” them. 

The “honeycomb” of lights is also a metaphor. By calling the pattern of windows a “honeycomb,” Charlie organizes the skyline into a living, working structure. It’s as though the city is a beehive and those awake and working are the bees. Each lit window is a cell within a larger pattern, and this metaphor gives the city an exciting feeling of energy and productivity. It’s also notable how much Charlie’s ability to use descriptive language has increased. Earlier in the novel he could not recognize or use figurative language at all,  but now his thoughts increasingly begin to form images and comparisons. This shift shows the expansion of his mind, which also drives his restlessness in walking through the city at night.

There’s a huge volume of hyperbole in all of Charlie’s speech here, especially in the statement “everything is sharp and clear, each sensation heightened and illuminated.” The intensity of how he perceives everything around him is intended to show the effects of Charlie’s late-stage transformation after the operation. Keyes presents a scene here where “reds and yellows and blues glow,” and where Charlie’s surroundings look oversaturated and hyper-real. When he describes a “crystal universe spinning” and the way he can “see all the facets of it reflected in gorgeous bursts of light,” the novel gives knowledge a physical, visible form. Rather than seeing the world like a normal person, Charlie’s new intellect makes his surroundings appear dreamlike and glowing. These lines help the reader imagine thought and memory as a structure of sharp, beautiful surfaces, always moving and reflecting light. Charlie sees connections between everything in his field of vision, which gives him the sense that “all the things [he’s] learned have fused into a crystal universe.” To Charlie, all knowledge has webbed together into a single, perfect structure. He can literally see things that nobody else can.

Charlie’s voice is full of hyperbole here, beginning with the phrase “everything around me is waiting.” His words create a self-important sense that the entire world is also waiting in suspense to see what will happen to him. The sun “pressing [his] shadow into a tight ball” also overstates the physical sensation of warmth he feels in the dream. The pressure of everything around him matches the pressure Charlie feels at this peak in his intelligence after the operation. He feels he's the most intelligent being in the world. 

The author also relies on visual imagery here to turn Charlie’s emotional landscape into a physical one. Charlie's dream of being alone on the top of a mountain, with “greens and yellows” stretching out below, draws a clear picture of an isolated, godlike Charlie observing everything from a distance. He stands apart from the world. His own shadow, which “undrapes itself and stretches out toward the horizon,” also lets the reader feel Charlie’s sense of an ending approaching. He’s concerned—correctly—that his time on the top of the mountain will not last forever and is nervous for the shadows below.