A modern book that holds a great deal of sentiment within it is Stephen Chbosky’s novel, The Perks of being a Wallflower. The novel is about a young boy, Charlie, who has some anxiety about beginning high school especially after recently losing his friend, Michael, and he beings to write letters to an anonymous person. Charlie eventually becomes best friends with Sam and Patrick and goes through a lot of challenging situations that year. He deals with bullies, relationship problems, secrets, parties, drugs, abortion, and friendship. Throughout the novel, it is sensed that there may be something mentally troubling Charlie based on his strange actions. By the end of the novel a repressed memory of his is revealed to him and this causes him …show more content…
Charlie doesn’t give his friend any clues as to who his real identity is and asks the friend to not write back to him but simply listen to his story. Having the novel be written in a series of letters makes the story more intimate for the reader versus if the narrator had chosen to tell his stories in a traditional first person point of view novel or as a diary. The narrator writes to the friend saying, “Even though I didn’t know you, I felt like I did because you sounded like such a good person… The kind of person who would understand how they were better than a diary because there is communion and a diary can be found” (206). A diary can always be found and read by another person but letters leave your presence as soon as you mail them and an intimacy between the sender and the receiver of the letter is made. Charlie writes these letters knowing that someone will read them and has the satisfaction of knowing that there’s a good person out there whom he can confide in when things are getting rough. In Bartleby the Scrivener, by Herman Melville, we meet Bartleby who is employed as a copyist and eventually stops doing his work because he says that he would prefer not to and stays in his office all day. Bartleby’s employer rids of Bartleby by moving his office to a new location, having Bartleby
Charlie, also has a peculiar speech pattern. Despite being a young teenager, his language is somewhat outdated; and he has a sardonic sense of humor. He shifts from “fancy” vocabulary to a more simple type of speech on a regular basis. In his first letter of Part 4, he describes someone’s face as “ashen”; but he had previously described his family members using the words “nice” and “fat”. Surprisingly simple speech from someone so seemingly contemplative. He, Charlie, is also very “matter-of-fact” about things. He does not say things that he does not believe to be true; and if he’s unsure, he states his ignorance as a fact. This is easy to see in Part 1 when he states, “I am really in love with Sam, and it hurts very much,” like it was an immovable thought or an unchangeable
The narrator in Melville’s short story, “Bartleby the Scrivener” is put in a tough position as he hires a new scrivener, Bartleby. I sympathize more with the narrator as he is simply trying to go about his job while Bartleby’s troubled state and disobedience proves to he a hassle. Initially, Bartleby produced extraordinary work but then slowly declined to producing nothing. Being a scrivener proved a exhausting and demanding job but when asked to look over copies Bartleby would reply that he “prefers not to”. Most bosses in the position of the narrator would simply fire Bartleby but the narrator simply stops asking Bartleby to do any work as he cares about Bartleby’s well being. When the narrator finds Bartleby living in the office he says, “My first emotions had been those of pure melancholy and sincerest pity.
On page four while he was having his dream, he rescued Joan from the river. After he woke up, he realized the dream was a message telling him to become friends with Joan. On page seven it states, “...what he had taken for cruelty had been love, that far from hating her everybody had loved her from the beginning…” This proves that Charlie could have showed his true opinions in the first place. These parts of the story are when Charlie realizes that he should have shown his own opinions in the first place, instead of trying to become
Bartleby, the Scrivener, is a story written by Herman Mellvile. It is about a successful lawyer who hires a homeless, depressed man named Bartleby to transcribe documents for him. The narrator of this story is the lawyer. Throughout the story, Bartleby declines at his job, saying he would “prefer not” to perform his duties. Eventually, the lawyer learns about Bartleby’s homelessness by discovering he has been living in the office. After a while, the lawyer feels it would be best for the business to just move to a different office, so he does. To his surprise, Bartleby follows him there. Bartleby ends up getting arrested and eventually dies while in prison. This story has great meaning to it. The main character displays a great character of
In the beginning of the book Charlie writes a letter a friend that he trusts. He’s using ‘Dear friend,’ everytime to show us that he trusts us enough to talk about these topics that he cannot talk
Charlie was a man that did not know how to stand up for himself. He allowed his peers to bully him, and treat him like he is worthless. Charlie thinks that if he allows people to laugh at him, and tease him, they will become his friend. He thinks “Its easy to make frends if you let
Eventually, Mary Elizabeth forgives him. It is about time for Sam, Patrick, and his sister to graduate and for his favorite teacher to leave. Charlie starts to wonder how he will cope with the loss of his friends yet again. Then, he learns of the hidden horrors of his childhood and becomes indisposed with the knowledge of his molestation. Charlie is sent to a hospital where he gets help in rediscovering who he is. Following his release, Charlie is much better at creating relationships and is more hopeful for the
We get to know Charlie through letters he writes to the unnamed “friend”. Charlie has a lot of internal conflicts which he deals with every second of his life. He deals with his best friend’s death and his aunt’s death and his past with his aunt. These internal conflicts make him withdrawn. Moreover, Charlie has a need to tell someone about his life and thoughts, maybe to feel less lonely. In the very start of the story Charlie expresses: “I don’t want you to find me”, which emphasizes that he does not want a concrete person to help him, he only needs to let his thoughts out. Charlie is absolutely a dynamic and round character. He is an intelligent, observant high school freshman who hides his beautiful personality because of having dealt with a lot of trauma in his childhood. Through the relationships he develops over the course of the school year, Charlie suddenly comes out of his shell and grows as a person. For example, what he tells Sam who has also dealt with a troubled past: “Even if we don’t have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there”. However, it is not until the very end of the book that he uncovers the repressed memories of sexual abuse of his aunt that are at the foundation of his internal
Charlie was known to have the personality that was always bright and talkative. Charlie had the lowest skill level out of all his “friends” and he didn't understand how real friends should treat one another so he never thought anything of it. Charlie felt good about himself but he wanted to be smart and know what his friends and other people around him knew. He was ready to learn and he wasn’t scared because he pushed fear away; he just wanted to know what it was like to comprehend what was going on in the world. The
His frustration grows after his friends start heading off to college and has a constant stressor from all the flashbacks he’s having, believing that he himself killed his Aunt. Charlie was close to his aunt as a child and it is obvious that aunt Helen was playing favoritism when it came to charlie. Aunt Helen gave him a special attention and she was kind to him, she told him that she understood him and he was special but this in a way was a ruse. Charlie repressed his memories of aunt Helen 's sexual assault but started realizing eventually, Charlie has a mental breakdown during his first sexual encounter with Sam and the realization of his past comes flooding in after she touched his leg similar to the way his aunt Helen did to him. He was sexually assaulted by his aunt and he tried forgot all of this and he tried to move on with his life but he saw memories that haunted him. This could be the possible reason and explanation as to why he said to her sister that he wished their aunt to die. Afterward, charlie is in a hospital after trying to commit suicide and must start accepting the truth to get past what happened. Charlie is often trying to please people and is always worried about how other people feel but never truly worries about himself, it could be that charlie is very caring but it is possible that charlie has had this way of thinking instilled in his mind: aunt help was very disturbed as charlie knew this and because of this he was constantly
| Based upon the quotes, “He’s all alone and has no friends,” “marooned on a desert island,” and “I hope he gets a friend and not be lonely,” Charlie is coming to understand what loneliness is. Some students may also see the direct comparison between Charlie and Robinson Crusoe. Also, his ability to think about someone else and their place in the world shows an increased emotional intelligence.
In the story, Charlie experiences being lonely in different aspects of his life. The first one that he feels this in is his family. His family consists of his parents, his brother and sister, and his aunt Helen. His parents, especially his dad, have never really been that involved or shown much interest in his life. This is shown when after he had been on LSD and was found in the snow, they never questioned if he was on drugs, they just contributed it to his prior problems of “seeing” things. His dad usually just ignored Charlie because he was different and quieter than the other kids. Charlie’s brother isn’t in the story much because he’s away at college playing football for Penn State. Charlie’s sister is in the story pretty often, but she doesn’t really talk to
Herman Melville's short story “Bartleby the Scrivener” is about a lawyer who hires a copyist, named Bartleby, who politely refuses to not work. While most employers would not tolerate an employee who continually prefers to do less work, this lawyer finds it hard to dismiss or discipline his scrivener and allows his insubordination to go on for an extended period of time. Bartleby shows great acquisition at copying documents and works diligently all day and night. The lawyer soon discovers that Bartleby has begun to reside in his office and never leaves. After only a few days of working there, he expresses his preference to not aid in group read outs of the papers copied, a common scrivener duty. When asked to do simple tasks he
“When a rule is enforced, the person who is supposed to have broken it may be seen as a special kind of person, one who cannot be trusted to live by the rules agreed on by the group. He is regarded as an outsider.
In "The Perks..." there are a variety of personalities portrayed through the book. Charlie being the "wallflower" of the title, was different from most of the other students at his high school. He understood what most didn 't and didn 't judge anyone for who they are or what they were like; on the contrary, he actually thought about and sometimes asked why they decided to be that way, and there was nothing more to it. Through out the book, entirely composed of letters to an unnamed "friend", he explains how he met eccentric people, like Sam and her step-brother Patrick; two kids a few years older than the at the time freshman Charlie. Sam