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.