A childs goal is a simplistic one.

Seek love in the arms of your parents,

siblings, and friends, and if you are received with open arms, the goal is complete.
At the end of a day, no matter how awful the child has behaved or how unfair the
parents are in their choice of discipline, a child longs to be loved. It is not till later in
ones life that goals begin to change. After a while, children grow into teenagers,
and while they still want their parents to love them, it gets pushed to the sidelines
as they begin starting their own lives. In Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes, the
main character, Charlie Gordon, is a disabled man. His goal is childlike because he
cannot get past that intellectual stage. However, he is not completely blinded to
thishis one aspiration is to be smart. Fifteen year old Hannah has unreached goals
as well. In Jillian Hortons The Bicycle, young Hannah has a burning desire to be
free. She is closed in, like Charlie, but unlike her, Charlies sheltered state is of the
mind.
Even a feeble-minded man wants to be like other men. A child may not know
how to feed itself, or what to eat, yet it knows of hunger, (Keyes, 518). This is
Charlies explanation of what he felt before he became smart. His progress did not
happen all at once, but over time. Miss Kinnian says maybe they can make we
smart. I want to be smart, (Keyes, 500). Immediately, we know Charlies desire,
and the story follows his journey as he becomes smarter. Within the first page of
The Bicycle Hannah reveals her first desire as well:
Though I was supposed to be studying my Hebrew lessons, I would press my
face up tight against the bedroom door and listen to hear Tante Rose tell my
parents that I had a brilliant future as a concert pianist. I dreamed of myself
in flowing dresses with my long black hair grown out to my waist and a string
of pearls at my throat, (Horton, 33).
These two characters are united by their dreams. Over time, they develop new
dreams, and as the story unfolds, one can watch these transitions.
While Charlies most wanted goal is to be smart, he has underlying desires as
well, such as wanting to have friends. Before he was used in the doctors
experiment to be smart, he was oblivious to the fact that his friends were making
fun of him. After the operashun (Keyes, 502), his eyes are opened to this.
Then I walked home. Its a funny thing I never knew that Joe and Frank and
the others liked to have me around all the time to make fun of me. Now I
know what it means when they say to pull a Charlie Gordon. Im ashamed
(Keyes, 510).
Now Charlie has no one except the experimenting Drs. Nemuur and Strauss, and his
teacher, Miss Kinnian. A friendless situation does not go unshared as Hannah feels
similarly in her story. Being kept so busy between dreams of becoming a famous
concert pianist and keeping up with school work, Hannah has no time to have
friends, or do anything else.
My friends Ilana and Leah, I observed, rode bikes and talked about movies
and books and had dates and dance classes and Hebrew lessons. I went
home to Tante Rose. I felt lonely and isolated, increasingly aware of the
differences between myself and the girls like Ilana and Leah.