Why does the author of Flowers include the story of The Fall from the Bible?

The outline for the essay cannot be due by tomorrow.  I am trying to get all classes to a jumping off point.  What I mean is, I want to have taught them the skills they need to examine the piece.  Sections 2 and 3 are basically there.  Section 1 will be there after today.  Tomorrow we will work on the outlines.

As far as vocab, we will probably just do the review unit next week and unit 7 after the break.

Today:
In sections 2 and 3 we studied "The Fall" from Genesis in the Bible.  In the story Flowers for Algernon, there is a character who says that Charlie's intelligence growth is not natural, and she tells him about the story of Adam and Eve being cast out from the Garden of Eden.  Common Core Standard  CC.8.R.L.9 asks students  to analyze how a modern work of fiction draws on themes, patterns of events, or character types from myths, traditional stories, or religious works such as the Bible, including describing how the material is rendered new. I asked the students to think about why the author included this story from the Bible.  There is a parallel between Charlie's quest for knowledge and the serpent convincing Eve that knowledge is good.  We had, what I thought, was an academic study of the Bible story.  I told the students that the more they read literature from history, the more they will encounter allusions to the Bible. There are certain stories they must be aware of.  In fact, when we read the part about the snake biting the heal, some students noted that we just read about that in The Cask of Amontillado. That image was on the Montresor family crest.  Allusion to this story and evil, or just a common idea that stepping on a snake wrong can result in death?

(We did not get into theological discussions of man or woman or who or what created earth.  The focus was on how Charlie's situation is similar to the Bible story. The students did notice how human Adam and Eve were in the story.  How could they resist eating from the tree? They also did not take responsibility blaming others.)

Here is the passage we read from the Bible in class. (NIV version)

Adam and Eve and the Tree of Knowledge

¹⁵ The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. ¹⁶ And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; ¹⁷ but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”

The Fall

3 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

² The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, ³ but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”

⁴ “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. ⁵ “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

⁶ When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. ⁷ Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

⁸ Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. ⁹ But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”

¹⁰ He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”

¹¹ And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”

¹² The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”

¹³ Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”

The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

¹⁴ So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,

“Cursed are you above all livestock
    and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
    and you will eat dust
    all the days of your life. ¹⁵ And I will put enmity
    between you and the woman,
    and between your offspring^[a] and hers;
he will crush^[b] your head,
    and you will strike his heel.”

¹⁶ To the woman he said,

“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
    with painful labor you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
    and he will rule over you.”

¹⁷ To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’

“Cursed is the ground because of you;
    through painful toil you will eat food from it
    all the days of your life. ¹⁸ It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
    and you will eat the plants of the field. ¹⁹ By the sweat of your brow
    you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
    since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
    and to dust you will return.”

²⁰ Adam^[c] named his wife Eve,^[d] because she would become the mother of all the living.