The Perks of Being a WallFlower
The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a novel written by Stephen Chbosky, published in 1999 by MTV Books. It is Chbosky's most famous work, and has been translated into 31 languages and has remained on the New York Times Bestseller list for several years. The novel is structured as a series of letters that Charlie writes to an unnamed friend. These documents chronicle Charlie's trials, tribulations, and triumphs as he goes through his first year of high school.
The Perks of Being a Wallflower is written from the point of view of a high school freshman, Charlie. He begins writing soon after the suicide of his friend Michael since he feels alone as school starts. Charlie meets an older student named Patrick early in the year and is introduced to his step-sister, Sam. Charlie later meets the rest of Sam and Patrick's group of friends, and the resulting sense of community enables Charlie to feel somewhat comfortable at school. Charlie's English teacher pays special attention to Charlie and assigns him extra books to read along with papers to write for personal enjoyment.
Charlie also reflects the larger personal problems that he deals with everyday in the letters. Charlie constantly worries about others and tries to determine what is going on beneath the surface of society. As the story continues, Charlie's mental instability becomes more clear. He is obsessed with his Aunt Helen, who died on his birthday when he was young. Charlie feels persistent guilt about his Aunts death because she died while buying Charlie a second birthday present.
Charlie meets people who deal with difficult personal issues throughout the novel, including: cheating, abortion, and drug use. It is not until the end of the novel, when Charlie is about to have sex with Sam, that he realizes that Aunt Helen had sexually abused him. He begins to have a breakdown. When Sam leaves for college soon after this revelation, Charlie's downward spiral continues. His parents find him naked and disoriented, and he is after hospitalized. After undergoing several weeks of therapy, he comes to terms with the fact that his Aunt Helen had molested him every week when he was a young boy. His immense love for her led him to suppress the memories these events. Charlie closes the novel by announcing that he may no longer need to write his letters. He has started to believe that he has agency over his own life and that he does not need to be defined by his past.
The Perks of Being a Wallflower is written from the point of view of a high school freshman, Charlie. He begins writing soon after the suicide of his friend Michael since he feels alone as school starts. Charlie meets an older student named Patrick early in the year and is introduced to his step-sister, Sam. Charlie later meets the rest of Sam and Patrick's group of friends, and the resulting sense of community enables Charlie to feel somewhat comfortable at school. Charlie's English teacher pays special attention to Charlie and assigns him extra books to read along with papers to write for personal enjoyment.
Charlie also reflects the larger personal problems that he deals with everyday in the letters. Charlie constantly worries about others and tries to determine what is going on beneath the surface of society. As the story continues, Charlie's mental instability becomes more clear. He is obsessed with his Aunt Helen, who died on his birthday when he was young. Charlie feels persistent guilt about his Aunts death because she died while buying Charlie a second birthday present.
Charlie meets people who deal with difficult personal issues throughout the novel, including: cheating, abortion, and drug use. It is not until the end of the novel, when Charlie is about to have sex with Sam, that he realizes that Aunt Helen had sexually abused him. He begins to have a breakdown. When Sam leaves for college soon after this revelation, Charlie's downward spiral continues. His parents find him naked and disoriented, and he is after hospitalized. After undergoing several weeks of therapy, he comes to terms with the fact that his Aunt Helen had molested him every week when he was a young boy. His immense love for her led him to suppress the memories these events. Charlie closes the novel by announcing that he may no longer need to write his letters. He has started to believe that he has agency over his own life and that he does not need to be defined by his past.
Interview with Stephen Chbosky
According to About Entertainment, a theme that is constantly brought up in The Perks of Being a Wall Flower is how our shared experiences help us validate and understand each other. In answer to a 16-year-old girl in the audience, this is what Stephen had to say about his main purpose making the film according to About Entertainment:
"I have one central mission about the movie, which is...I wanted to make a movie that would celebrate and respect the reality of your life -- just what you're going through right now. And at the same time...that simultaneously your mom or dad or somebody who you wouldn't think could relate, would feel as nostalgic and love it for their own nostalgia as much as you loved it for your present day reality. And that maybe, my hopes of hopes, is that this perceived generation gap -- let's say you think your mom doesn't get it, and then she sees it, and you realize, oh, maybe she does a little bit. I know it's just a movie, and it's pretty idealistic to think it can bring families closer together...but that's what I want to do."
Target Audience
The Perks of Being a Wallflower's main target audience is teenagers since basically all of the issues touched upon in the novel occur throughout the teen years and therefore it is a novel that teenagers can easily relate too. Though teenagers are the main target audience, The Perks of Being a Wallflower is defiantly a novel that pretty much all audiences can relate to. Ultimately, The Perks of Being a Wallflower really succeeds in transporting readers back to a time in their own lives when a song, a nighttime drive, or a friend’s smile is all they need to get through the day. Despite your age, this movie will remind you that adolescent angst is temporary but the joys of growing up are infinite.
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The novel is extremely appealing to me as a reader since it is easy to identify with Charlie. Relationships are a very big part of this novel and they are something that everyone can relate to and identify with. Charlie learns to come closer to other people and stops living in his own little world. This book is suitable for people, who like to read about emotions and problems in a "normal" life. Though this book is suitable for almost all audiences, it is not something that kids should be reading. Sometimes the plot is complicated and the language is not appropriate for young generations. Overall, as a reader you get to know some of Charlie's problems and chances are you are able to relate to a few of them so it is easy to understand these special moments.
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Messages/Purpose
This book explores almost every topic, subject, or problem that a teenager could face. It talks about teen pregnancy, sexuality, addiction, romantic drama, bullying, sexual abuse and more. Charlie goes through all these things and he learns how to deal with them through mistakes and with the support from the people he loves. There are many messages discussed throughout this novel that really left an effect on many people, including myself. Every person sees different messages in this novel that are apparent due to their own life experiences. One of the main purposes of this novel is to try and prove that everyone should become the protagonist of their own life. The Perks of Being a Wallflower proposes the message that everyone is more than a disorder or a trauma extremely successfully. Sometimes, no matter how strong we pretend we are and how normal we try to be we need a connection with people to learn how to mend past pain. This message is shown throughout the novel since Charlie had been abused, emotionally manipulated, and even felt guilty about his abusers death. Charlie needed to learn that there were people out there who knew he wasn't normal and that that was okay, because he was moving forward. Another message displayed in this novel that everyone should understand is that we should all learn to understand others. Everyone has a past that maybe they are running from, and everyone is moulded and is being shaped based on their past experiences. Instead of judging people, we should instead help them in moving forward, we should understand their past and not judge them based on what we see in them now. Another message that this novel is attempting to display is that you are not alone. Charlie's feelings of loneliness are something we've all experienced to some degree. Of his experience writing the book, Stephen said to About Entertainment:
"This is the most gratifying thing about Perks for me, you write it for personal reasons, but you publish it in part because you hope that maybe certain people will not feel as alone. Here's the best magic trick, and I didn't expect it to happen: every time I get a letter, every time someone stops me on the street, any time I hear about anything, the person who doesn't feel alone, is me. Over and over, thousands of people validating my experience, and so it's this beautiful dance between writer and reader, but really between two people who understand the same truth."
In my opinion, all of the messages that The Perks of Being a Wallflower discuss are extremely important and are done in an extremely successful way. The Perks of Being a Wallflower informs and entertains its readers through many different techniques that all proved to be very successful.
Values |
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Values are the fundamental beliefs of a person according to Your Dictionary. Values can help people to know what is right from wrong. There are many different types of core values and many different examples values depending upon the context. Some examples of values are:
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The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a novel published in 1999. Novels appeal to me along with many others for many different reasons. Reading novels is extremely relaxing and has many positive effects on us. A new study done by Castano claims that reading novels makes us nicer and more empathetic, psychologists at the New School for Social Research have found. Castano, said that fiction “forces you as a reader to contribute your own interpretations, to reconstruct the mind of the character.” Canadian researchers have also found that reading fiction increases our ability to be empathetic to others.
In regards to this media text, the fact that it is a novel appeals to me greatly. The Perks of Being a Wallflower has many cliff hangers throughout the story and therefore reading the novel over time allowed me to look forward to the next time I could read. |
Codes and Conventions
All genres will have a set of ways that allow us to recognize them by simple features. These are called codes and conventions. A code in novels is a firm rule that can never be broken. Codes in novels can be things such as; character codes, plot codes and structural codes. Conventions are habits or long and accepted ways of doing something. These can change a lot as a genre develops. However, if you change too many or too quickly the readers may not grasp onto what is happening. The codes and conventions used in The Perks of Being a Wallflower help to make it the coming of age novel that it is. For example, the characters are really what make the novel coming of age due to the fact that throughout the novel the characters are maturing in many different ways. Coming of age novels are extremely appealing to me because they are any novel in which the main character, typically a young adult or child, undergoes one or more events which foster some sort of growth (emotional/physical) and comes out a more experienced, mature, and changed character. This type of novel is easy to relate with and often leaves its readers, including me, inspired.
Media Business
Novel was written by Stephen Chbosky and distributed by Pocket Books in 1999 (both earned money from this, but the exact amount is unclear). The novel was a commercial success and was on the best seller list.