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Perks Of Being A Wallflower Essay

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Having sold over 2 million copies, The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky is a #1 New York Times Bestseller novel that has captured millions of people’s attention worldwide. Taking place in the early 90’s, a fifteen-year-old boy named Charlie is experiencing his first year of high school. Unfortunately, Charlie has lost his only friend and now has to navigate his own way to fit in. As a person who is naturally withdrawn, Charlie finds himself struggling to discover and maintain his new friendships, love life and sexuality. With the secret of having an abusive childhood, Charlie’s past slowly begins to haunt him. The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a spectacular novel because of the cathartic installments, a compelling main character …show more content…

Chbosky has the ability to allow the reader experience a wide variety of emotions, in particular; anger, frustration, joyfulness and sadness. For instance, just after Patrick was caught with his secret boyfriend Brad, Brad began to throw some spiteful comments towards him at school. Since the school was still clueless about their relationship, Brad developed the need to retain his popularity, which resulted into Brad and his friends beating up Patrick in front of the whole entire student body. As a caring friend, Charlie made sure to stand up to Brad by fighting back and personally threatening him that if he ever did a stunt like that again, Charlie would expose his secret. As a reader, you could feel a great deal of anger towards Brad for turning against Patrick and becoming a bully. At the same time, you would feel happy for Charlie as he went out of his comfort zone and stood up for his hurt friend, whom you would also feel sorry for. Chbosky made this book with the intended purpose of keeping the audience eager to read more of his novel. He simply did this by having them experience an absorbing, emotional rollercoaster ride with all of his cathartic segments that would keep them keen. Allowing the audience to experience an emotional discharge, this opens up the opportunity for the reader to become deeply attached to the main

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