The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Author: Stephen Chbosky

Publisher: Pocket Books, Gallery Publishing Group

Pages: 213

Some books come to us as a breath of fresh air. Stephen Chbosky’s work- the perks of being a wallflower is one such book. He also wrote and directed the feature film adaptation.

The book has been on the New York Times bestseller list for over two years and over three million copies have been sold in print. It is a coming-of-age tale, a story about traveling through high school.

The lucid language used in this book is surprisingly effective in exploring the vivid complexity of emotions, characters, and dynamics.

The story revolves around Charlie, who has been diagnosed with clinical depression since he was a young boy. He struggles with making friends and he keeps to himself, showing us that he is the wallflower in this story. However, he is extremely thoughtful and observant of all that goes on around him.

The book gives us a very unique perspective on the different factors of high school- some of them being about the friends, the curiosity, and the struggles through letters. Each letter begins with “Dear friend” and ends with “Love always, Charlie”. The recipient never writes back so we don’t know who the friend is. The book reads like a series of diary entries.

A few days into his freshman year, he meets two seniors- Sam and her stepbrother Patrick. They got along well, and he was invited to a party for the very first time where Charlie eats a weed brownie by mistake and reveals to the readers that a year before, his best friend took his own life.

He was soon included in their friend group and other than that, he made a personal connection with his English teacher Mr. Bill Anderson. He recognizes his talents for literature and assigns him extra work to help him.

It is also evident that Charlie has a crush on Sam, as he tells her about it but she treats him affectionately. She kisses Charlie simply because she wanted his first kiss to be from someone who loves him.

The holidays come around but this time is always a difficult one for Charlie and his family because it brings up memories of his aunt Helen’s death. He struggles to cope with flashbacks of his time with her. The book also talks about his sister being in an abusive relationship, which he has witnessed.

Charlie begins to come out of his shell a little bit and performs as Rocky in the Rocky Horror Picture show, his friend group’s regular viewings of the film.

He also gets into a few problems and complications with his relationship with a girl named Mary Elizabeth.

Brad is gay and closeted. He has a secret relationship with Brad- the son of an abusive and extremely homophobic father. Brad can never admit that he is gay and insults Patrick by making a derogatory comment about his homosexuality.

A new side to Charlie is shown now, an angry and violent side. He comes to defend Patrick and punches Brad.

As the year is about to end, it becomes real to Charlie that his friends will be going away to college.

In an epilogue, Charlie writes a final letter to his “friend,” dated two months later, saying that his parents had found him naked in a catatonic state on the couch.

They took him to a mental hospital, where Charlie eventually realizes that Aunt Helen had sexually abused him, but that he had repressed these memories. Charlie forgives the memory of his Aunt Helen, and the novel ends with Charlie writing that he is planning to stop writing letters and to start participating fully in his life.

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