Perks Of Being A Wallflower Essay

The character Charlie in Stephen Chbosky’s Perks of Being a Wallflower is an interesting one. Charlie is influenced by many people, and the plot is driven by his inner turmoil as a ‘wallflower’. One of his greatest influences is from his Aunt Helen. Chbosky is able to paint a strong picture by using Aunt Helen, even though she does not appear in his story at all. She can easily be credited as an underlying drive for the book’s plot.

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.

In the novel Charlie takes each person’s words into his heart and ponders about them thoughtfully. Nostrils Charlie’s best friend sticks by his side and is loyal at all times. While Nostrils is doing a job with Charlie, Nostrils gets beat up by Barlow and Nostrils tells Charlie to run which lands Nostrils in hospital. This teaches Charlie to be loyal and listen to what his friends tell him to do. Another incident is where Daisy Molony who is a prostitute tells Charlie to ‘use that money fer somethin’ good’, the filthy money that Squizzy Taylor gave to Charlie, for doing jobs for him. Mr Redmond is another strong character in Charlie’s life, teaching Charlie boxing, giving Charlie a gramophone and training him to run in the Ballarat mile. This shows Charlie, through an old man’s eyes, love and compassion. Mr Redmond dedicated a lot of time and energy for Charlie. All these people show Charlie a fragment of properties and qualities. From himself and spending time with his friends he learns how to nurture the feeling s of others but not the feelings one

Teenagers today face a number of problems, ranging from peer pressure and alcohol, to depression and rape. These severe topics can have an intense effect on a growing child, now, and in the future. Many modern teenagers face the daily struggles of harmful situations, and the good and bad in them. In The Perks of Being a Wall Flower, Charlie faces almost every bad situation imaginable, in a heart breaking and realistic coming of age story. Charlie does not have the grandest high school experience, but the book represents the harsh and cruel reality of what so many students face today. Charlie, also being on the unclear side of what he was experiencing, was also hit hard with the outcomes of his actions. Drugs, alcohol, and sexual interaction contributed to the difficult standards that are held to growing students, in their fight to fit in. Every teen has faced the harsh reality of peer pressure and abuse, which takes a harsh effect on its victims. In the beginning of the story, Charlie faces the death of one of his friend Michael, to suicide. Starting the beginning of Charlie?s coming of age story, also known as a freshman in high school. Throughout the book, peer pressure, substance abuse, the fight to be normal, and the hope to have friends in the first place pushed Charlie to take the wrong path in some situations. Charlie?s coming of age story represents the teenage life today

     The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky is a poignant 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. Chobosky does a remarkable job at describing all of these issues through the eyes of a shy, introvert teen. The reader will be shocked, amazed, and grateful to join Charlie in his walk down the road of realization and growing up.

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.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a story which is told through a series of letters written by Charlie, a freshman in high school. (Chbosky, 2012) In the letters he tells about what his day was like, his feelings and his thoughts about his life. Charlie does not know the person he is writing to, and the person’s identity is never revealed. At school, Charlie finds it hard to make friends and he does not feel like he fits in. This is mostly because of his troubled past and he is still trying to cope with the recent suicide of his best friend, Michael. In addition, his beloved Aunt Helen died at his seventh birthday when she went out to buy Charlie a birthday present and he constantly

‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower’ follows shy and kind-natured Charlie Kelmeckis (Logan Lerman- Percy Jackson, The Butterfly Effect) as he enters high school alone, after the recent loss of his middle school best friend to suicide. Charlie gets befriended by seniors Sam (Emma Watson- Harry Potter-Beauty and the Beast) and Patrick (Ezra Miller- Justice League, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them) and finally feels accepted.

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

“We can’t choose where we come from, but we can choose where we go from there.” (Chobosky, 2012). This is told to Charlie by his psychiatrist in the movie “The Perks of Being a Wallflower”. It empowers Charlie to let go of the past, and gains the control over the life in the future. The movie is like a mirror to reflect many things, emotions, and feelings of one person such as the struggles, friendship, love, inferiority, eagerness of being a better person, and infinity.

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 novel, the characters seem to break each other’s hearts in sort of a domino or cycle pattern and it’s all focused on one character. This character is Charlie and he has had a crush on one girl named Sam for the entirety of the book since she is introduced, but he’s very nervous and shy when he is around her. After he begins to get comfortable around Sam, she begins to realize that he is interested in her. Even Though she leads him on by kissing him, Sam isn’t actually interested in Charlie the way that he thinks she is. Sam only sees a friendship in Charlie, while he sees more and he -wants to be with her. Sam claims that there is an age gap that makes her believe that she couldn’t be with him. While Sam sees this age gap and uses it as an excuse, her friend, Mary Elizabeth, likes Charlie and wants to be with him. Charlie thinks that Mary Elizabeth is a very pretty girl, but she doesn’t measure up to Sam. once Charlie and Mary Elizabeth have officially

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

January 2015, there was a girl who was living in a home filled with fighting causing the tension in the air to be so thick you could cut it with a knife. Being the ripe old age of 15, and being a pastor’s kid, this girl, having only ever known parents who lived together and experienced a seemingly happy life, quickly had to adjust to a life the exact opposite. This girl had to learn to live with her parents at two different addresses, her dad changing professions, not seeing her brother all the time, and hours upon hours of counseling. Within the past year or two, I have had to grow tremendously as a person. As a teenager, we are supposed to be confused with who we are and high school is the time that we are supposed to start finding ourselves,

The novel Perks of Being a Wallflower written by Stephen Chbosky is a book that revolves around the life of a young teenage boy named Charlie. Charlie is in his first year of high school and is shown to encounter many different types of people and experience many different emotions throughout the novel. Charlie is at a vulnerable age where a person can easily be influenced by the actions of the people around him and all the emotions he’s feeling can overwhelm him into doing something he might have never wanted to do. Charlie’s decisions not only affect him but also affect his family and friends. Charlie relies heavily on drugs as a way to escape reality and numb himself of all pain as a direct result of coming of age and influences from