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Theme Of The Perks Of Being A Wallflower

Decent Essays

Task 1
Analysis of “The perks of being a wallflower”
Thea Bossum

The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a story which is told through a series of letters written by Charlie, a freshman in high school. (Chbosky, 2012) In the letters he tells about what his day was like, his feelings and his thoughts about his life. Charlie does not know the person he is writing to, and the person’s identity is never revealed. At school, Charlie finds it hard to make friends and he does not feel like he fits in. This is mostly because of his troubled past and he is still trying to cope with the recent suicide of his best friend, Michael. In addition, his beloved Aunt Helen died at his seventh birthday when she went out to buy Charlie a birthday present and he constantly …show more content…

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 These internal conflicts make him withdrawn.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

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