While
reading The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky I learned a very
important lesson. This book is about a boy who writes letters to someone, in a
way that is almost like a diary. He doesn’t know this personal know the person,
but he knows who he is. The boy, who is writing the letters, calls himself
“Charlie” but you’re never really sure if this is his real name. While writing
these letters he describes many things from, important to not important, and
tends to loose track of what he was saying, and end up on a completely
different topic. Although he is an outsider, he has managed to make some really
great friends. While being with these friends, he learns a lot, and they help
him to live his life. See, when Charlie was at a young age, he lost his Aunt
Helen, who he was very close to. This loss seems to affect his life greatly and
make him who he is. However, at the end of the book you learn something, but
your not exactly sure what. Charlie becomes severely depressed, and has to go
to the hospital. It turns out this has something to do with his Aunt Helen.
Something she did to him, something Charlie never remembered until he got his
chance to be with Sam, she molested him. The lesson that I think this book was
written to teach is that although you can be coming of age, it is about
becoming more mature, or gaining knowledge, or even becoming experienced at
things it about finding out who you are, and how different events in your life
got you there. Which is exactly what Charlie did by the end of the book.
Towards
the beginning of the book, you find out where the name The perks of being a
wallflower comes from. Patrick calls Charlie a wallflower, and everyone agrees.
He thing explains that it is when, “you see things. You keep quiet about them. You
understand.” (p 37). This goes along with the message of the book that coming
of age is about learning who you are, and how you get there. This is because
Patrick is saying, although he doesn’t mean it in a bad way, that Charlie is
never there. He is the person you want him to be, the friend you could use, not
even the friend you need, but the one who’s there. He will do anything to help
you, but in the end its not helping anybody. Basically, if Charlie is always
just the person people want him to be (the wallflower) then he will never find
himself, and learn who he really is.
This
message of Charlie just being on the outside, and not doing what he wants to do
continues throughout the whole book. Another way this is seen, is that
Charlie’s English teacher Bill, is always telling him he has to participate.
Charlie and Bill develop a very close relationship, because Bill is one of the
few people in the world who realize how amazing, and special Charlie really is.
Bill tells Charlie that he has to “participate” multiple times in the book, and
Charlie keeps going back to this. Saying how he tried to participate by going
to the school dance, and he participated by going to the party with Sam and
Patrick, and so on, but he learns later that he was never really participating
he was just there.
Charlie
learns this when at the very end of the book he is talking to Sam. She is
basically just straight up telling him all of these things. She says:
“It’s
great that you can listen and be a shoulder to someone, but what about when
somebody doesn't need a shoulder? What if they need arms or something like
that? You can't just sit there and put everybody's lives ahead of yours and
think that counts as love. You just can't. You have to do things…. Like take
their hands when the slow song comes up for a change. Or be the one who asks
someone for a date. Or tell people what you need. Or what you want… It’s like
you can come to Patrick’s rescue and hurt two guys that are trying to hurt him,
but what about when Patrick’s hurting himself? Like when you guys when to that
park? Or when he was kissing you? Did you want him to kiss you?’
I
shook my head no
‘So
why did you let him?’
‘I
was just trying to be a friend,’ I said.
‘But
you weren’t Charlie. At those times, you weren’t being a his friend at all.
Because you weren’t being honest with him… I’m going to be who I really am. And
I’m going to figure out what that is. But right now I’m here with you. And I
want to know where you are, what you need, and what you want to do.” (200-202)
This conversation between Sam
and Charlie basically sums up the whole message of the book. To grow up you
have to find out who you are, and to do that you have to do things. You can’t
just be a wallflower, sure that okay sometimes, but you have to really
participate. Not just hang out with friends, but ask them to hang out, and do
what you want to do, because you want to.
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