The Realization of Passivity “‘Where should I go?' asked Alice. 'That depends on where you want to end up' responded The Cheshire Cat.”(Carroll Lewis) “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky is a phenomenal coming of age novel that depicts how Charlie, the introverted protagonist, develops a new understanding of life. Set in the early 1990s, Charlie narrates his freshmen year of high school experience through an anonymous series of letters to a stranger. He begins the novel isolated by his peers and feeling lonely until he is befriended by Sam and Patrick, two seniors who encourage Charlie to experience new things and life live to its fullest. Charlie is considered to be a wallflower, which is someone who, because of shyness …show more content…
In fact, his passivity is evident, after a fight in the cafeteria involving himself and Sean, the student who was bullying him. A student who witnessed the fight, tells the truth to authorities about what really occurred and how the fight was not Charlie’s fault. Charlie hopes that the student can eventually become friends with him but instead Charlie writes this opportunity off by doing nothing to become friends with this student. This is palpable when Charlie states in his novel, “I was hoping that the kid who told the truth could become a friend of mine, but I think he was just being a good guy”(Chbosky 8). Although Charlie would very much like to have become friends with this student, his passive nature influences him to not do anything about it. Until Charlie recognizes that it is his own passivity that is preventing him from developing relationships and being the person he would like to be, he will remain lonely and ostracized. Consequently, with the guidance of his english teacher, Bill, Charlie learns from his character flaw which helps him be able to thrive in a community he once felt lost in. Bill recognizes Charlie’s wallflower stance and how lonely he is, and spiritually stimulates him to seek new opportunities. Charlie takes this advice by, among other things, writing less letters. “I’m …show more content…
The first symbol is revealed when Sam is speaking to Charlie to truly participate about how it’s not enough to have friends or just be there but that, Charlie really needs to engage with his friends. “It’s great that you can listen and be a shoulder to someone, but what about when somebody doesn’t need a shoulder? What if they need arms or something like that? You can’t just sit there and put everybody’s lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love. You just can’t. You have to do things”(Chbosky 200). In other words, Sam uses a shoulder to represent Charlie’s passivity and wallflower status. The shoulder symbolizes his inaction, a stationary anatomy to be leaned on. It symbolizes how Charlie listens and is always there for his friends but the arm symbolizes how Charlie needs to put himself out there; give his opinions, speak up and challenge others, be a man of action, be the “arms”. It demonstrates how he emotionally grew to become a “shoulder” but also how he needs to continue to grow. Undoubtedly, Charlie has become someone who participates in life. This is demonstrated in Charlie’s final letter when he describes his ride through the Fort Pitt tunnel with Sam and Patrick. Instead of overanalyzing his drive through the tunnel as he did the previous times, Charlie allows
Charlie is very far from what most people call normal: he is shy, introverted, awkward, independent, paranoid, confused, respectable and kind; showing many examples of this throughout the book. He keeps to himself for the most part and is constantly in his own head. Aside from the many negative traits he also has many attributes: he is a loyal friend and listens to the people he talks to, he is a caring person and comforts those in need. However he has his flaws as well: Charlie can get very angry and upset at others which causes him to lash out with violence or sadness, he is extremely sensitive, crying frequently and constantly questioning himself. Several of his peers labeled him as nerd or a weirdo, which damaged
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 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 Perks of Being a Wallflower is a coming of age film about a 15 year old boy, Charlie, who has been through much trauma. As a freshman Charlie is left with no friends, because of the suicide of his best friend Michael, but he has the support of an english teacher who inspires his dreams of becoming a writer. Eventually, step-siblings Sam and Patrick discover that Charlie is lonely and in need of a friend, so they take him under their wing. Sam, Patrick, and their group of friends have much wisdom about life, because they are older, much of which they share with Charlie. Under the wing of Sam and Patrick, Charlie becomes more excited about life. Although, he still struggles with the side effects of past traumas, and dreads the day his new friends leave for their lives after high school.
‘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.
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
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
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.
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
Charlie, the main character in The Perks of Being a Wallflower, tells his story through a series of letters written over a span of one year, or Charlie’s freshman year of high school. Author Stephen Chbosky, tells the story of a young man trying to find his way and also trying to make friends in school. Along the way, Charlie has trials he must go through, and not everything results in a happy ending right away. Eventually, all is well in Charlie’s life, but he must struggle in order to finally be content and happy with his life. Charlie’s coming of age story is told through his trials of trying to fit in by going to parties, drinking and even doing drugs while many of his relationships are hurt in the process. Just as every other high school student, Charlie wants to feel like he belongs, even if that means becoming someone that he is not. Along the way, not only is Charlie hurt, but also his friends Sam and Patrick. The relationships with these two friends, and Charlie himself are tested by all of their actions and how they live their lives.
was at a party) and voiced that you think that your Aunt Helen's death was your fault. Knowing