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

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 Perks of being a Wallflower the main character Charlie struggles with not only his sexuality, but also the complications of sexuality of those around him. The movie portrays Charlie, Patrick, and Charlie’s love interest Sam, going through one long mischievous bonding trip, while exploring their own sexualities .It opens up with Charlie writing to a friend about his daily struggle in trying to find people to accept him for who he is. Charlie, like many people in society, is uncomfortable in his skin, and he feels judged by those around him. According to Sara Ahmed in “Queer Feelings”, homosexuals always feel uncomfortable because they cannot fit in. Charlie may not particularly be gay, but Charlie meets a man named Patrick who is in fact gay, and they become quick friends. Throughout the movie, introverted Charlie encounters the bad side of sexuality through molestation, bullying, fornication, and domestic violence. For example, Patrick’s lover in the movie, Brad, is a popular football quarterback, who desperately tries to suppress his sexual feelings for Patrick out of fear of what his father, and friends, might think of him. In the past, Linda Garnets states in “ Sexual Orientations in Perspective” that sexual orientation was understood as an old paradigm, so in Brad’s case people would label him as gay, simply because of what he does with his reproductive organs. But, Garnets believes that the new paradigm would say that people can act differently than they

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

After beginning to read “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky, I have realized that this is definitely a story about growing up and just facing the trials of being a teenager. The book is made up of letters written from the point of view of a freshman in highschool named Charlie. He is a very interesting and dynamic character but, he is also very relatable. In many ways he is similar to the teenagers of today, even though the letters are dated in the early 1990s. However, Charlie struggles to understand people and simple social cues which makes me wonder if he has a mental disability.

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

The Perk of Being a Wallflower” is a very interesting book. It is a dramatic comedic with a very interesting plot. The main character is Charlie. He is 15 years old and is a very awkward character. Charlie is quiet and sensitive. Another protagonist in the book is Sam. She is the girl that Charlie has a crush on. But the problem is that she is a Senior at their high school while Charlie is a Freshman. Sam has a stepbrother named Patrick. But they are very close friends. The book starts off with Charlie writing a letter explaining how a traumatic event happened during middle school, which was his best friend committing suicide because of family problems. And this event scarred Charlie because he didn't understand why it happened. After this

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.

Heartbroken or not, there was no way in hell I was going to school tomorrow. There was no way I was going to school after Jonathan broke up with me in front of all my friends and then proceeded to push me into a pool. Our short lived relationship was more of a fling, if you can even have a fling without kissing or anything. Anytime we’d try something he would start praying at me, telling me the big man in the sky wouldn’t approve. I thought it was ridiculous. But not only did Jonathan break up with me and push me into pool, he pushed me into a pool when I had a white shirt on. I didn’t want to go to school, I didn’t want to face the whole junior class who had seen through the stupid white shirt that I wasn’t even planning on wearing.

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

The perks of being a wallflower is a book written by Stephen Chbosky. The novel follows a 15 year old boy named charlie, following his journey through freshman year in high school through letters to anonymous. The novel is written in a way that can relate to any teen or maybe even adults, with issues that involve things likes drugs, alcohol, suicide, abuse and homosexulity. Most those issues can be very hard go through or talk about, but within this novel everything is argued and analyzed. The novel makes other people understand that whatever they are going through and experiencing in life that it's not just them, but they many other people.