The 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 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.

Author of The Perks of a Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky, mentions an important point when he says, “Banning books gives us silence when we need speech. It closes our ears when we need to listen. It makes us blind when we need sight.” Banning books has been a practice since 443 BC in Rome when Socrates was to drink poison because of “his corruption of youth and his acknowledgement of unorthodox divinities,” says Beacon for Freedom of Expression. Before a book can get to the point of being banned, it undergoes a process of being challenged. This is when a group of people or a person tries to restrict certain materials. When a challenge ends up being victorious, the book gets banned and removed. Some people believe that certain books are not ethically

“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.

According to Charlie Kelmeckis "we are who we are for a lot of reasons"(Chbosky 210). Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower, is a charming coming-of-age tale centered around adolescence in the 1980s. Chbosky guides readers through an emotional hailstorm using the outlook of Charlie - a self-declared wallflower. In his novel, Chbosky captures the zeitgeist of the 1980s - in relation to teenagers - by describing common occurrences of the time such as premature sexual activity and abuse, drug use, depression, and sexuality. To give the book a more authentic setting, Chbosky develops the 1980s era using popular pop-culture references - television and music - as well as testimonials from Charlie concerning postmodern education systems,

In both Steven Chbosky and J.D. Salinger’s coming of age novels ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower’ and ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ both authors successfully explore the idea of entering adulthood as an outsider. The Perks of Being a Wallflower follows a fifteen-year-old boy, Charlie. Charlie has recently lost his best friend Michael to suicide and is struggling to come to terms with his death. He is in his freshman year of high school and struggles to fit in socially, until he meets a group of seniors who take him under their wing and introduce him to a world he could never imagine. Written in the form of a series of letters to an anonymous recipient, Chbosky allows the audience to have an in-depth perception of Charlies’ mind and his

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

Throughout Stephen Chbosky's novel The Perks of Being a Wallflower he describes how a teenager is going through the mixed emotions that comes with being in high school. Charlie, the main character, is different from most teens his age. However he gets through this with the help of friends and family. In some cases, his friends are the only reason he wants to keep going and ultimately taking a huge toll on how Charlie is viewing things in his life; moreover, they help him understand that he should live life, and not just watch others enjoy it. Bill, Charlie's English teacher, states “Charlie, we accept the love we think we deserve” (Chbosky 24). Charlie learns to interpret this, and apply

Chboksy, S. The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Great Britain: Simon & Schuster, 1999. back cover.

According to the article Evidence is in, and it’s Not Good, one thing is for sure, that private education is academically worse in math and reading. (par.3)

In the beginning of The Perks of Being a Wallflower Charlie is a “Wallflower”. He notices things about other people and keeps quiet. He understands things about people that others would jump to conclusions about. He lives in the shadows. As time goes on and his past begins to haunt him once again he meets people that decide to notice him. They are his friends, and the only ones who are willing to accept him as he is. Charlie begins to discover the joys of life from a different place outside of the shadows just as the shadows begin to creep in. If he can keep the shadow of his past away then he can move on, but it's hard to get rid of the past if you see it all around you.

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