YA book response: "The Perks of Being a Wallflower"

Charlie, the main character in the young adult fiction novel, “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky is a Freshman in high school who comes into school at the beginning of the year, friendless. This is until he meets two step siblings that are also seniors at his school, Patrick and Sam. When he first lays eyes on Sam, he instantly falls in love with her. Unfortunately, he finds out that Sam has a boyfriend, Craig, and is very disappointed. Eventually, towards the end of the book, Sam and Craig breakup and Charlie and his girlfriend, whom Sam set him up with, also breakup. Charlie is happy yet he is more focused on how sad Sam is after her breakup than getting together with her. However, they do kiss but they don’t go any further because Charlie feels uncomfortable. When they kissed it brought up an unfamiliar memory of Charlie’s past featuring his favorite aunt, Helen, who died in a car crash when Charlie was little. In the memory, Helen was doing something very odd but disgusting with him, she was molesting him. This memory makes Charlie feel horrible because he feels like his whole relationship with his aunt was a lie. This causes him to have a mental breakdown but eventually, with the help of his friends and family, he gets better. Each Relationship that Charlie has effects how he lives the rest of his life and affects how he takes on the world.

One important relationship that Charlie has is his relationship with Sam. Sam is a great friend, especially towards the end of  the book. Sam helps Charlie grow up and helps open his eyes to so many opportunities in the world. Sam is very loyal to Charlie and wants to protect him. She makes Charlie stronger. For example, when Charlie tells Sam that he has never kissed anyone, she kisses him even though she is still dating Craig. After they kiss and Charlie asks why she did what she did and she says, “‘I just want to make sure that the first person that you kiss loves you.’”-page 70. She is doing this because her first kiss wasn’t with someone who really loved her and she doesn’t want Charlie making the same mistake. Also she does this to make Charlie feel happy even though she knows that it could eventually hurt her relationship with her boyfriend. The kiss makes Charlie not scared anymore around girls. He no longer feels as awkward around them because in a way, by kissing one, he understands them more. Sam really loves Charlie as a true friend and maybe even as something more. Sam pushes Charlie to be himself and challenges him to be a stronger person.

Another strong relationship that Charlie has is his relationship with Patrick. Patrick pushes Charlie to grow up but he does not always do this intentionally. Patrick doesn’t baby Charlie as much as Sam does and he doesn’t understand Charlie as well either. But, he still teaches Charlie a lot. When Patrick does something that he doesn’t like, it causes Charlie to stand up for himself. Also, when Patrick messes up, he needs a friend so Patrick’s actions force Charlie to become a good friend. For example, when Patrick, who is gay, first broke up with his boyfriend, he took advantage of Charlie. Charlie and Patrick would spend a lot of time together and several times, Patrick actually kissed Charlie. Patrick knew that Charlie wouldn’t stop him because he is too shy. But even though Charlie isn’t gay he still lets Patrick kiss him, not because he doesn’t know how to stop him, Patrick was wrong) but because he thinks this is being a good friend to Patrick. This helps Charlie learn that if a friend is in pain, he should always try to help them even if that means doing things that he doesn’t want to do. Later on, Patrick gets over his old boyfriend, because of Charlie. However, later when Patrick gets better Charlie thinks, "Maybe since he isn't sad, he won't want to spend time with me”. This leads the reader to think that the entire time Patrick was using Charlie to make himself feel better. Patrick ends up spending more time with Charlie anway but their relationship is still pretty shaky.  Even though Patrick isn’t always the perfect friend, he still teaches Charlie a lot of lessons and Charlie is able to learn from Patrick’s mistakes.

Charlie has always been different. He is too afraid to take chances in his life and it seems as though he is always watching everyone else live their lives but never actually lives his own life. At the beginning of the book, the reader doesn’t understand why Charlie is this way. However, in the end, the reader can understand because the reader is now aware of what Charlie’s Aunt Helen did to him when he was little. This made him the way he is. At the beginning of the book, Charlie’s Aunt Helen seems as though she helped Charlie grow up and learn important life lessons. Aunt Helen taught Charlie how to be happy and how to understand that some big changes in life is OK. Charlie has only held on to the good memories of her. At the same time, he feels as though he is responsible for her death because she died in a car crash on his 7th birthday while she was getting him a birthday gift. He feels as though if he had never been born, then she would still be alive. However, at the end the reader realizes that because of what she did to Charlie as a kid, she actually prevented him from taking a lot of chances. Charlie loves his Aunt and misses her greatly.  However, because she molested him, Charlie could never trust anyone as he grew up. At the beginning there was no specific bad memory of Aunt Helen doing anything bad to him  at all.  There was always this little part in him however, where he felt betrayed and he was always “different”. But, the reader, and Charlie, never knew what it was until he had the flashback when he was with Sam. Charlie then realizes that the reason why he acted so weirdly was because he felt like the one good thing in his life had been a lie, Aunt Helen didn’t actually love him, and now, he could never let himself trust anything or anyone. At the end of the book when Charlie is reflecting back he says, “We accept the love we think we deserve.” Aunt Helen didn’t deserve his love but Charlie was so young at the time that he didn’t think that what Aunt Helen was doing to him was wrong. Aunt Helen made Charlie feel vulnerable and small, her actions made Charlie not want to grow up anymore.

The main theme in “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” was clearly that relationships with other people can affect a person later in life. However, another big theme in this novel was the opposite. It was how as you grow up, your relationships with other people can be affected. The author includes a poem in the book about a boy who grows up to show this theme. In each section in his life, he writes a poem (in the poem) and in each section, the poem matures a little bit and the reactions of the people around him change as well.  Growing up effects the relationships a person makes and the relationships you make also affect how a person grows up and what they learn.