Charlie thinks that getting smarter will solve his problems. Is he right?

Getting smarter changes his life, but it doesn't solve his problems. Sadly.... it even creates more problems. The reason why Charlie wants to become smart is so that he can “have lots of frends who like [him]” (10). He has been instilled since his childhood by his mother that intelligence will earn her love, and the affection of others. Charlie is afraid of being lonely in the world, something he more fully realizes when he becomes smarter and thus more aware. However, as he increases his IQ, Charlie realizes that his intelligence is also an alienation. He has crossed over onto the other side of the intellectual barrier, and Dr. Strauss has to remind him to write so that other people can understand him. Charlie is fired from the bakery, and realizes that “This intelligence has driven a wedge between me and all the people I knew and loved, driven me out of the bakery. Now I’m more alone than ever before” (83). This continues into his love life with Alice, as he continues to rise on the IQ spectrum and leave her behind: “But with the freedom came a sadness. I wanted to be in love with her… Now that’s impossible. I am just as far away from Alice with an IQ of 185 as I was when I had an IQ of 70. And this time we both know it” (97). After the arguments at the cocktail party, Charlie goes back to his apartment, pained, realizing the superficiality of his relationships (even his sexual relationship with Fay as he hears another man in her apartment), and asks: “What has happened to me? Why am I so alone in the world?” (194). Rose’s deceptive desires for Charlie to become smart confused him, making him equate intelligence with friendship, and stupidity with loneliness. When he sees Rose’s picture in the newspaper, he “suddenly hated her. It would have been better if she had ignored the doctors and teachers and others who were so in a hurry to convince her I was a moron, turning her away from me so that she gave me less love when I needed more” (130). Instead, Charlie learns that both intelligence and stupidity at their extremes lead to loneliness. Charlie has the most friends when he is at a happy moderation, like the rest of the people in his life.