Reflecting on the Theme - The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Now that I have finished the novel, I can say that without the epilogue, this book would have ended in a massive cliff hanger. Personally, I think the book couldn’t have ended in any other way then what the author listed, and at first I didn’t even think the book was going to end on a note like that. The only thing that I could say is how attached I got to this book. I finished the novel in about a week or two, and when I got to the ending, all I said to myself was “where’s part two?” The book is based on Charlie’s grade 9 year, and he only made friends with people in their senior years so now that they are leaving for college, Charlie is left alone to make new friends, and I really wanted to see what it was like.

The theme of this book in my opinion was based around friendship, Charlie was entering his first year of high school with zero friends and very low social skills, and this book follows his journey of him changing himself and giving others a different impression of who he is then who he used to be. I think the author did a good job in introducing Charlie to a new group of people at party that he got randomly invited to during that one talk with Sam and Patrick. I also feel like the author wanted to give the theme of his book more than just one theme, the other themes that I felt was in this novel was drugs and alcohol, Love, Family, and a lot more but I feel that they were just Charlie’s high school phases. Some moments that you can find these themes taking place in the novel are at pg.13 Charlie meets Sam and Patrick (Friendship). In pg.139 Charlie starts smoking pot, to keep himself together while he has to take a break from his friends (Drugs). In pg. 126-127, Charlie makes love to Mary Elizabeth for the first time (Love).

Realistic or Not? (The Perks of Being a Wallflower

There are a few real life problems that Charlie goes through in “The perks of being a wallflower” some being, mental health, addiction, and somewhat violence in sections of the novel. The author, Stephen Chbosky, portrayed the real world problems in a realistic way where it wasn’t so much of a stereotype of how every high school kid gets peer pressured into drugs, but something that Charlie went through considering the other problems that he struggled to deal with.

Mental Health, Charlie frequently goes to the doctors for them to do therapy tests on him to see what is making him get flashbacks, fainting and not remembering what happened before that. Further into the novel, it is told that one of Charlie’s flashbacks of Aunt Helen have deeply traumatized him since her death. The reason why I find this portrayed in a realistic way because of how we can relate it to our reality. I personally don’t know anyone who is traumatized but I’ve seen news articles of serial killers being abused as a child, traumatizing them and making them do things that the norm wouldn’t do.

Addiction, during the novel, Charlie gets into a heated situation with Mary Elizabeth after Charlie kissed Sam. Patrick then tells Charlie that he needs to take a break and he will let him know when everything is cooled off again. During this break period, Charlie gets very nervous with the feeling that he will maybe never talk or see his friends again due to something he did. Charlie began to use weed, along with smoking cigarettes during school breaks to help cope with the situation that he was going through. Personally, I think this is definitely a realistic representation of a real-life problem, but the things that people use to cope with things are always different, sometimes its television, and sometimes its snorting coke.

Violence, there isn’t much violence in this book but this one scene with the group fight involving Charlie, Patrick, Brad, and Brad’s friends, in this moment, Charlie is seen watching Patrick getting beat up by Brad’s friends when he decides to step in and defend him. I think violence wasn’t a good choice for me to use in this novel, what Charlie did to them definitely was violent, but in a realistic way point of view, I would say that what Charlie did in this scene, was self-defense. 

Blog - Questioning Character

I feel that the main characters in this novel “the perks of being a wallflower” are mostly all round characters, meaning there is no stereotypical character that anyone can just look at and be like, “oh, he must be the smart one out of all the characters”. Some main characters that have multiple traits are Charlie, Sam, and Patrick.

Charlie, one of the main characters, has multiple traits. Charlie is someone that you can trust, Charlie is someone who is brave, and Charlie is also very smart, he tends to read a lot, and writes a lot such as his diary. Charlie is always the person that people can trust and rely on, during the novel; Charlie has been trusted by his sister, Sam, and Patrick. During pages number 150-151, a fight erupts with Patrick and Brad after Brad insults Patrick, Patrick then gets jumped by Brad’s friends and that’s when Charlie proceeded to help him by fighting them, after Charlie helped Patrick, I really felt that the character trait of Charlie being brave was proven in that moment.

Sam, one of the main characters, also has multiple character traits, Sam is someone who is very social, friendly, and can sometimes be bossy. Sam was one of Charlie’s first friends in high school, during pages 18-20, Sam and Patrick introduce them to Charlie, and also greeted him into his first party where he met a lot of other people, making Charlie a lot more comfortable of high-school after his only friend, Michael, committed suicide before high-school, Sam in my opinion was one of the reasons why Charlie was happy during his grade 9 year.

Patrick, one of the main characters, has many character traits such as, funny, sociable, outgoing, trustworthy, and a jokester. Patrick was one of the people that Charlie looked up to during the beginning of the novel, Charlie saw Patrick as someone who is funny and someone who can make friends with anyone and no one would ever faze him. During pages, 17-18, Patrick introduced Charlie to Sam who created a friendship between the three of them, making Patrick someone who is very outgoing, and sociable.

Introducing the Novel - The Perks of being a Wallflower

Blog Post on The Perks of Being a Wallflower

The Narrator in the novel, “The Perks of Being a Wallflower”, being Charlie Kelmeckis, was very reliable when talking about what he is doing for himself, and what he has planned, but can sometimes be a little confusing when he explains his past. I have already finished the book so what I can say about how reliable Charlie is. I’ll say that when it comes to him and his Aunt Helen, he tends to be completely oblivious to what Aunt Helen did to him, during the beginning and the middle of the novel, he usually only explains the good times they have had, spoiler alert, towards the end of the novel, Charlie explains to the doctor that Aunt Helen molested him when he was a child.

“My Aunt Helen would always let us kids stay up and watch Saturday Night Live when she was baby-sitting or when she was living with us and my parents went to another couple’s house to get drunk and play board games” (p.16) I found that Charlie the narrator was reliable when talking about the good memories he had with Aunt Helen, it gave the readers and I an assumption that Aunt Helen was the most loveable person, and when she passed, it deeply traumatized Charlie when he kept telling himself all the good memories he had, and how it was his fault for her death.

“Despite everything my mom and doctor and dad have said to me about blame, I can't stop thinking what I know. And I know that my aunt Helen would still be alive today if she just bought me one present like everyone else. She would be alive if I was born on a day that didn't snow. I would do anything to make this go away. I miss her terribly. I have to stop writing now because I feel too sad.” (p.52). Basically, Charlie is saying that he clearly goes to the doctor for therapy but doesn’t take any of the doctors notes into consideration, leaving him into a depressed phase were he keeps blaming himself but doesn’t really explain his Aunt Helen or what the doctors have told him, making this quote of narrator, unreliable.

So this isn’t really a quote but more of a summary of what happened in these few pages as a lot of stuff happened, p. (210-212) So basically when Charlie’s crush, Sam, touched his lap, he got a flashback of his past where Aunt Helen was molesting him, Charlie continued to deny that he was the way he was because of what he remembered Aunt Helen doing, but when he explained what he remembered to the doctors, the doctors then told his parents that he was indeed molested as a child by his aunt. I know this isn’t a quote, but I found that these past 2 pages of Charlie narrating his past started to become clearer to him and to the readers, but his denial still made him an unreliable narrator where the readers and I still needed some more hints to his past to judge what happened.

I personally feel that Charlie was an unreliable narrator but strictly for the fact that he was traumatized about his past making it hard for the readers to follow along with him about it. However, I feel that Charlie being a traumatized narrator was the reason why the book became so successful, strictly because the readers had to continue reading to pin point hints to find out what traumatized him so deeply.