Preview

Perks Of Being A Wallflower Essay

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
506 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Perks Of Being A Wallflower Essay
The Perks of Being A Wallflower was written in 1999 by Stephen Chbosky for the publishers of MTV Books. The particular edition I read has 256 pages and is considered an epistolary novel, meaning it is composed of documents such as letters. In this case the letters are written by the narrator to a friend. The story takes place in a Pittsburg suburb in the early 1990s. Charlie the protagonist is a freshman in high school and is struggling with his adolescence. He begins to write these anonymous letters to help him cope with his best friends recent suicide. The only good friends Charlie develops in the book are a brother and sister, Patrick and Sam. While some would say the antagonists in the book are only Charlie’s vices, such as drugs, abuse …show more content…
It is modern day novel of a “messed of teenager” like in The Catcher in the Rye. Throughout the novel, Charlie manages his depression but is hunted by faint realization of his beloved late Aunt Helen, being kissed by his homosexual friend and helping his sister through an abortion. Progressively in the book Charlie reads and writes papers on books that his English assigns him outside of class, because he sees that Charlie is a bright boy with some inner troubles. This is how Charlie begins to open up. Many allusions are made to others books, such as, To Kill a Mockingbird, This Side of Paradise and On The Road. The reader would find that Charlie lives his life on a song-to-song basis. He is a mix tape fanatic and uses songs to define his situation. He would define his life personally by the word “infinite”. He wants to become it, and feels the only way of doing so is seeing things, keeping quite about them and understanding. Yet, it keeps being pressed on Charlie to understand that you can’t just listen and think, that is not participating in life. Charlie always put everyone else’s lives before his and thought that counted as love. He was always a shoulder for same to cry on because he thought he loved her but never the arms to hug her. However, Sam was his saving grace and made him realize that love was about honesty, which

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Charley Chapter Summaries

    • 715 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Charley is a boy who was about to begin his freshman year of high school. He is writing his first letter to an unknown friend because he needs to let his thoughts out to someone. He begins his letter by telling how he lost his best friend Michael who passed away, and later learns that Michael had commit suicide by shooting himself. Charlie was devastated. Michael death makes him wonder if he also has “problems at home”.…

    • 715 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    ‘The Perks Of Being A Wallflower’ is a film set in the early 1990’s and addresses the problems that Charlie, the main character, faces while attending high school after his best friend from middle school had committed suicide only months before…

    • 1395 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The book follows a boy named Augusten who lives with his parents; his mother reads poetry and wants to have her work published in the New York Times. While his dad works as a professor at the University of Massachusetts and has a skin disease as well as being an alcoholic. After his parents’ divorce his mother goes to see a man named Dr. Finch who is a psychiatrist and helps…

    • 560 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    The book begins with 15 year old boy named Charlie writing letters to an unknown recipient about his life. He discusses how he is beginning high school and his fear of it because his only friend, Michael, committed suicide the year before.…

    • 1015 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    "Charlie" is the alias of the adolescent narrator of the novel, who is about to begin his first year of high school. The novel is presented through letters that Charlie writes to an anonymous person about whom he has heard the girls at school talk fondly. Charlie begins his freshman year apprehensive as a result of the death of his only good friend Michael. Michael committed suicide several months before while they were still in middle school. He does not feel that he can lean on his parents or older siblings for support, because they never truly understood him. He also explains that the only relative that he ever felt close to was his Aunt Helen, but she was killed in a car accident on his seventh birthday.…

    • 938 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Brief Movie Psychology

    • 484 Words
    • 2 Pages

    First of all, to start with the interpersonal relationship. After Charlie's best friend committed suicide in 8th grade, he became depressed and admitted into a mental health care institution for a while. After the discharge, he started his high school life with no friends. Charlie desires to have new friends, and finally, he been accepted by Sam and Patrick. Charlie values his friendship. When his friendship taken a turn to the worse side, he sank back into depression and started to experience flashbacks of his Aunt Helen. In this movie, this is…

    • 484 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Charlie as a young boy lived his life to be a free man. He went from home to home. Everytime running away from where ever they put him. Eventually he began to be start being more of a rebel and began to…

    • 1033 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky is a touching coming of age story about a teenage boy named Charlie who is entering into his freshman year of high school and trying to cope with death, life, friends, and sexuality. Charlie a shy, introvert teen that becomes friends with new people and starts to experience new things in his life. Charlie’s life is greatly shaped by a few of his friends, namely, Patrick, Sam, Bill, Mary Elizabeth, Michael, Aunt Helen, and lastly his sister.…

    • 994 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In The perks of being a wallflower, main character Charlie (no last name mentioned) writes letters to an unnamed “friend”. In these letters Charlie describes his experiences as a Freshman in high school and at home. He is constantly trying to better understand the people around him and why they do what they do - particularly how they present themselves in public. Charlie is a loner, but he also is understanding/non-judgemental, thoughtful, kind human being.…

    • 485 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    1. Dating: In The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Charlie deals with the conflict of having a crush on Sam, and trying to figure out how to deal with his crush. Charlie deals with the conflict of his emotions, but does not just want to fall in love with someone. This is evident in the novel when Charlie states, “It’s just that I don’t want to be somebody’s crush.”…

    • 596 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Firstly, one of the tragic elements portrayed in the novel is catastrophe. Catastrophe is something terrible that has happened which has changed the persons whole life around. One scenario of catastrophe in this novel occurs when Charlie’s best friend Michael Committed suicide right before high school was starting which left Charlie very miserable and impacted his social life negatively. “So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I’m still trying to figure out how that could be. I try to think of my family as a reason for me being this way, especially after my friend Michael stopped going to school one day” (Chbosky, pg. 2-3). This quotation explains that Michael’s suicide made Charlie very unhappy. The second tragic element shown in this novel is remorse. Remorse means feeling guilty or regret for something you haven’t committed. An example of remorse shown in this novel is when Charlie’s Aunt Helen dies in a tragic car accident and Charlie feels as if it was his fault that she had passed away because she had gone out to buy him two birthday gifts like how she does every year.” Despite everything my mom and doctor and dad have said to me about blame, I can’t stop thinking about what I know. And I know that my Aunt Helen would still be alive today if she just bought me one present like…

    • 1025 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Personally, I fell in love with " the perks of being a wallflower" I felt it truly understood how teenagers think and how it is to live with the pressures of school, family, and societal expectations. This book teaches people of every age to live life to the fullest from the tunnel scene to the production of "rocky horror picture show". It has inspired me to go out and find my own Sam and Patrick. I hope you will read this book and fall in love such as I…

    • 90 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky is a 256-page drama novel published by MTV on February 1, 1991. The story is written in a series of letters to an anonymous friend by the protagonist and main character Charlie who is very sensitive and has a lot of feelings along with being a wallflower. In the letters he reveals his secrets, stories, and also his worries and fears in life.…

    • 520 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Stephen Chbosky’s novel The Perks of Being a Wallflower and is about a boy, Charlie who writes letters to an anonymous person explaining his troubles throughout his first year of high-school. Charlie talks about many relationships he has/had however the one I believe impacted him the most was between him and his Aunt Helen and her tragic death. Charlie doesn’t talk much about her and what exactly happened between him and his Aunt Helen but however the limited stories he tells and how he feels, she is defiantly an influence on who Charlie has become today.…

    • 421 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    This teenage boy who calls himself Charlie, writes an anonymous person about his life and what is going on with it, sort of like a journal. Charlie is starting high school, and realizing all of the new pressures that come with being a teenager. Charlie goes through many topics found with being a teenager, such as sexuality, masturbation, drugs, alcohol, friends,…

    • 712 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays