Progress Report 16 Summary

Charlie visits the Warren State Home and Training School on July 14. It is a large complex of buildings that houses 4,000 people destined to spend their natural lives there. The patients are divided into two groups—tidy and untidy, with the untidy being the ones who are so severely brain-damaged that they cannot do even basic things for themselves like use the bathroom. Charlie morbidly wonders into which category he will.

He meets the head psychologist, Mr. Winslow, who gives him a tour of the facility. Mr. Winslow does not know Charlie's history and introduces him as a member of Beekman University. Although it becomes clear that the staff of Warren is an eclectic group of people, who are devoted to the patients whom they see as their children, the visit depresses Charlie. At one point, Mr. Winslow snaps at him that...