Flowers for Algernon Progress Report 9 Summary

  • Charlie shows he's a regular wiz-kid at the dough-mixer and finally gets his promotion at the bakery. He has a flashback to when his baby sister was born, but it's not a happy one—Charlie's mom whacks him after thinking he's trying to hurt the baby. Paranoid much?
  • With Miss Kinnian's help, Charlie's becoming a reading maniac. He gets the lowdown on punctuation and realizes that his old progress reports aren't exactly the next literary masterpiece.
  • Charlie hangs out with Frank and Joe again, but it's not all laughs and lampshade dances this time—the guys try to make Charlie dance with a girl and keep tripping him up for kicks, but Charlie's got a funny feeling that something isn't right. Later on, he has a dream about dancing with the girl and wakes up with "wet and messy" sheets. Lovely.
  • Here comes another childhood flashback: Charlie remembers getting pushed around by some mean kids and saved in the nick of time by good old Uncle Herman. If only we all had an uncle to chase down bullies with a hammer like Thor.
  • Charlie chats about his dreams with Dr. Strauss, who tells him to keep letting himself remember. He has another flashback dream about giving a girl named Harriet a locket and a Valentine, but it doesn't end well (does it ever?)—a kid named Hymie rewrites the Valentine to say some pretty nasty things, and Charlie gets rejected.
  • Remember the raw shock test that Charlie didn't really get? Turns out it's a Rorschach inkblot test, and Burt wants to administer it to Charlie again to see how far he's come.
  • Taking the test again doesn't exactly go over well with Charlie, who thinks Burt is trying to pull one over on him. Burt plays back a recording of Charlie's original Rorschach experience, and Charlie is shocked to hear how childish he sounds—it's like he's two different people.
  • Charlie decides to keep some of his progress reports private for a while, just so he can figure out what's going on inside his head.