Case Study : Perks Of Being A Wallflower

The Perks of Being a Wallflower is the story of a unique high school student named Charlie and his journey of self-discovery throughout his freshman year. Charlie’s personality changes drastically from the beginning of the book to the end of it; and this is what I want to focus on. First I am going to detail Charlie’s personality at the beginning of the book and then use Erik Erikson’s theory of Psychosocial Development, Kohlberg’s theory of Moral Development, Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development and an article about adolescent bulling to analyze them. I will then use examples from the book and film to illustrate his growth in the respected areas. Through these major theories of psychology I will show Charlie’s evolution from a wallflower to a human being.

The Perks of being a Wildflower movie is a great demonstration on adolescence and childhood development as it portrays how much we as humans are effected by our early childhood years and how we struggle to make sense of life while navigating through adolescence. We are molded by our environment, but also shaped by the neglect or abuse we suffer as children. The traumatic experiences are life altering and if not dealt with can have dramatic outcomes for our future. The movie has a great story line and walks the audience through the character and identity development of an adolescence. Dissecting Charlies character will be helpful in understanding that part of a human’s life and development.

For my paper, I am diagnosing Charlie from the film, Perks of Being a Wallflower. Before I delve into Charlie’s diagnosis, I will provide some background information about his character. In the film, Charlie is a 15 year old boy who has recently started high school as a freshman. He lives with both parents, and his sister who is a couple years older than him. Charlie also has a brother who has gone away to college. In school, Charlie is seen to be good with academics, particularly in English, since he has an interest in writing. However, Charlie does not have any friends and his best friend had kill himself in the last year. Furthermore, Charlie is seen to be quite socially awkward around his peers and usually keeps to himself.

The book and the movie for The Perks of Being a Wallflower are extremely different, and I believe that the movie is much better than the book. The book is written much differently than the movie. There are lots of scenes that are in the book but not in the movie and that are in the movie not the book. The movie focuses less on the bigger, depressing topics than the book does. The characters in the movie are also much different than they are in the book. Their personalities are very different in the movie than the author described them as in the book.

I absolutely adored Stephen Chbosky's (Beauty and the Beast, Allegiant) ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower’ for its captivating and emotionally driven storyline that will intensely connect with all. The movie is filled with teen angst and struggles we can all relate to and discusses topics our society shuns from. This is captivating to an audience and makes them think about mental health and trauma in a way they haven’t before.

Witnessing or experiencing traumatic events are normally followed by stress reactions, but when those reactions continue for longer than a month that is when an individual is diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, typically referred to by its acronym PTSD. Traumatic events include sexual assault, child abuse, domestic violence, near death experiences and a variety of other traumatic events. PTSD is characterized by three main symptoms: re-experiencing the event, avoidance of triggers, and increased arousal (“Symptoms of PTSD”). The novel, Perks of Being a Wallflower, is written in diary format which allows the reader to be exposed to Charlie’s inner thoughts.

Movies are constantly created by producers and writers to convey a particular meaning to their audience they are reaching out too. The meaning can be interpreted in several ways. For example, one can understand the meaning that was intended by the creators, or it could be an individual’s own understanding of a storyline in the movie. As a movie can be viewed through different perspectives, a dominant male named Louis Althusser created the theory of Interpellation and the Role of ISAs and RSAs to help further understand movies. Althusser’s theory explains that people in power will remain in power and others will be controlled by those in power (Hartt-Fournier, Lecture 2). Furthermore, the role of ISA, known as the Ideological State

Sociology is the scientific study of being behavior in human groups (Schaefer). There are very many examples of sociology in the movie The Perks of Being a Wallflower, but I view alienation, deviance, and gender roles to be the most prominent. This movie is about the struggles of a teenage boy named Charlie’s freshman year of high school. Charlie is seen as a social outcast and he just barely makes it through the year with the help of his best friends Sam and Patrick. Throughout the movie Charlie experiences most of the basic struggles of starting high school and some. This movie is very relateable since it gives a more realistic view of high school for some people. Charlie , and the audience, learns the importance of love and friendship in growing up in today’s society.

In the film The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Charlie, an introverted boy, coping with the recent suicide of his friend, begins high school. He finds trouble making friends until he meets Patrick and Sam. As Charlie attempts to improve his social interaction, and cultivate a sense of self, he continuously experiences blackouts and triggers. Nearing the end of the film, Charlie has a mental breakdown, which leads to his hospitalization, and he uncovers his repressed memories of his Aunt Helen molesting him. Charlie shows symptoms and behavioral tendencies of post-traumatic stress disorder in addition to a comorbid diagnosis of depression and social anxiety.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a novel about coming of age that is seen through the perspective of Charlie, a young ‘wallflower’ that is starting high school and experiences the troublesome teenage life filled with drugs, sexuality and love. Charlie writes this book in a series of letters to an anonymous person. Charlie is the main protagonist of the story who is apprehensive and a kind-hearted boy however he has many problems happening in his life that he doesn’t like to concern others with “I just don’t want you to worry about me, or think you’ve met me, or waste your time anymore”. I admire Charlie because he is very considerate of others and although he is shy he overcomes this fear when he tries to find friends and step out of his comfort zone” Normally I am very shy, but (Patrick) seemed like the kind of guy you could just walk up to at a football game even though you were three years younger and not popular”. In return Charlie is rewarded with his first real friend at high school. I also admire Charlie for his mature attitude towards finding new friends and moving on from the death of his friend Michael. Charlie really needed to start interacting more with people, during the story we find out that Charlie misses having a friend and that being alone can be difficult and cause negative effects “It would be very nice to have a friend again. I would like that even more than a date”. I think

For the vast majority of graduating seniors, freshman year is repeatedly picked as one’s worst year. Going into freshman year, I watched the film The Perks of Being a Wallflower, which recalled one boy’s adventure through freshman year facing repetitive bullying, peer pressure, and mental illness. Little did I know, my first year of high school would be filled with the same memories and struggles that Charlie had, and The Perks of Being a Wallflower would quickly become my favorite movie for both its personal impact and the meaning it has for high school students nationwide. As I eased into freshman year, bullying and stress took over on a regular basis.

The Perks of being a Wallflower synopsis This book is written in a letter format by the main character in first person. The letters are sent to an anonyms “friend”. At the beginning of the book Charlie, the person writing the letters, is a teenage boy who is about to start high school. Charlie writes about how he is nervous and scared about his high school, but then writes about more serious topics about himself.

In the 2012 film The Perks of Being a Wallflower the audience is immersed into the life of Charlie Kelmeckis, a socially awkward teenage boy undergoing his first year of high school. Charlie’s troubled past, consisting of multiple trips to the mental hospital and the death of his best friend, is a prominent factor that continues creating challenges for him throughout the film. When comparing Charlie’s development to that of research, such as Erikson’s Theory of Psychosocial Development and Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development, it is evident that his cognitive development, the relationship he has with his family, and the relationship he has with his peers are all major factors contributing to his psychological development.

The average American teenager has grown up in a world of labels and stereotypes: from movies depicting high school as an environment where exclusive friend groups command the school to magazines portraying flawless people and rendering them the paragon of beauty, American teenagers are constantly under pressure to conform to a certain label. The book The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky follows a boy named Charlie as he enters high school. His mental illness is apparent throughout the text, but it is never acknowledged until the very end of the book. The novel is a series of letters that he writes to an unknown recipient. His impartiality and honesty in his letters create an objective view of the events that unravel throughout the story. The Alan Review even describes the story as “one of the most honest literary portrayals of teenage life within the last decades” (Glenn). The high schoolers in The Perks of Being a Wallflower are submerged in a society where labels are prevalent: if one does not belong to a certain social group, they are deemed outcasts and ostracized by their peers. Charlie is lucky enough to have found friends in high school who accept him for who he is. Others are not so lucky, and are forced to change who they are in order to appease the societal pressures to conform. These individuals are left wondering who they really are, after years of pretending. The pressure students in high school face to fit a certain label and conform to the

was at a party) and voiced that you think that your Aunt Helen's death was your fault. Knowing