The Perks Of Being A Wallflower - Page 2

This book was exceptionally good...though it always amazes me, if you read people's booklists on Myspace, for example, that one usually sees both Catcher in the Rye and The Perks of Being A Wallflower on many of them...always together too.

Hmm...

I agree with no buisness, the ending fit perfectly
Which explains the reason he is the "wallflower"
He loved his Aunt so much that he let her do whatever she wanted to do with him
And he loved his friends in the same way
The whole book he's asking for somebody to tell him what's wrong with him, and at the end Sam finally tells him that he has to do what HE wants

I thought it was a great book, and that the ending explained why he was the way he was.

I know this comes a little late from this discussion but I just finished reading the book and was doing some research on it and came across this forum.
I think the ending is completely neccessary to explain why Charlie is the way he is. It is an unfortunate experience for him and I think thats why as a reader I didnt want it to happen to the character but it explains so much. It explains why, as Bill explains, Charlie thinks so much about life that he doesnt participate.
I learned in one of my psychology classes that people who are molested as children tend to have more dissociative experiences (like out of body experiences,) .They can make things that are happening to them seem not real,or like a dream so they dont have to experience the bad thing of being molested and when they are molested often they dissociate often and it becomes a way of dealing with all undesirable situations. They do it so often that it becomes a way of life. That explains why he doesnt remember ever being molested until much later in life. It just ties everything about him together.
When I think about it, it's really not that shocking that his aunt would do something like that because molestation is cyclical, like charlie explains, it happened to the man who did it to his aunt , it also happend to the man who did it to that man... so it makes sense that she would do it to someone else. It is just unexpected she did it to him because he loved her so much.

I agree with kelsbels completely. I thought the ending was completely necessary. Without the ending the book would be disregarding a part of many young peoples lives. I went through the same thing, when I read this book it all came back to me and helped me deal with it much better than I would have alone. I had never told anyone, but i felt i was necessary to tell some of my closest friends and by giving them this book to read it made it much easier to talk about and easier for them to relate. I also gave it to someone who I knew had also went throught the same thing. The book has helped me in so many ways. I love it!

sex, drugs, and music seem to be the frantic themes of this book, along with a loss of innocence. While Charlie's loss of innocence begins with his aunts death, it amplifies after his best friend commits suicide. With the inability to understand this change in life at such a young age, and the suppression of dramatic events, comes issues in mental stability. Charlie is given a fractured sense of self. He's quiet, emotional, and can only focus on the pain in others lives. When he meets Sam, he begins a transition into a new state of mind. He starts to understand things.

Now, the poem, when looked at in context with the rest of the book, is simply about the destruction of youthful innocence by time. As the boy ages, and gains a further understanding of the world, he sees flaws with his mentors, his parents love, and his own relationships. He begins to only see despair in the world. It's a poem that perfectly describes Charlie.


On a side note, I was incredibly disappointed that the poem was cut from the movie. The poem did well to describe Charlie, and what Charlie was going through, even though Charlie's friend was the one who came up with the poem by unknown means.

I usually hate this kind of book, but Perks is one of my all time favourites. Coming back from what abluesmurf01 said about the poem perfectly describing Charlie, I agree with that completely and had never thought about it in that way. The poem describes growing up and finally starting to think about life and relationships around you in a more in depth way, and realising that, for the most part, it's a huge unsatisfying mess.
I completely agree with the fact that Charlie's friend Michael wrote the poem, and this seems to be what most people who have read the book make of it. It's heartbreaking that Charlie says he wishes Michael had left a note, and then when Bob tells him after hearing the poem that he had heard that it was someone's suicide note, Charlie is still oblivious to the fact that this poem is the note that Michael left for him, explaining where it all went wrong.
This book is amazing, I wish I could write something like this.

i personally LOVED the book! that poem posted by wyote is amazing.