jessicamartin's Full Review: Stephen Chbosky - Perks of Being a Wallflower
“The Perks of Being a Wallflower” tells a year in the life of Charlie, a freshman in high school who journeys from having a hard time after his good friend Michael kills himself, to Charlie growing into a more well-adjusted teenager who is able to make friends, be a friend, and who eventually learns to accept himself.
What makes this book so amazing is the emotional honesty of the narrator and protagonist Charlie. The story is basically the recounting of daily life circumstances but told with such honesty that you can not help but be drawn into the story being told. People are smart and are inherently drawn to honest voices in this world. Whether the reader wants to hear the truth Charlie speaks of is another issue altogether. But Charlie’s voice is there for the listening, or in this case, the reading.
"Perks" is told in the first person in the form of letters to “Dear Friend,” an anonymous person who the reader never finds out the identity of. The letters are basically an outlet for Charlie to work out the daily angst he feels, and it is quite an effective literary technique.
The book begins by addressing his anonymous friend:
“Dear friend,
I am writing to you because she said you listen and understand and didn’t try to sleep with that person at that party even though you could have. Please don’t try to figure out who she is because then you might figure out who I am, and I really don’t want you to do that. I will call people by different names or generic names because I don’t want you to find me. I didn’t enclose a return address because I don’t want you to find me. I mean nothing bad by this. Honest.
I just need to know that someone out there listens and understands and doesn’t try to sleep with people even if they could have. I need to know that these people exist…”
As you can see from the excerpt, Chbosky’s voice is conversational & casual, yet intimate at the same time. The protagonist and narrator of “Perks,” Charlie, is like a modern Holden Caufield of “The Catcher in the Rye” fame. Charlie, who is thankfully less cynical and negative about mankind than Holden, is a young man trying to sort out his intense emotions, trying to come to terms with himself. Charlie has more acknowledged self loathing than Holden. Charlie always asks himself, “What is wrong with me?” whereas Holden views everyone else as “phonies,” blaming others for his unhappiness and angst.
Charlie is close with both his older sister and older brother, whose names the reader curiously never finds out, yet you feel as though you know them well just the same. His brother is an older football player in college, while his sister is a senior at his high school who is trying to figure out love in her own life.
Charlie’s Advanced English teacher Bill sees something special in the young boy. Bill becomes a bit of a mentor to him during his freshman year of high school. Bill recognizes Charlie’s disassociation from his classmates into the maze of his mind after his friend’s suicide, and as a result Bill urges Charlie to “participate” in life. Whenever he faces challenging situations and is tempted to retreat into the safety of his brain, Charlie repeats the “participate” phrase like a mantra. It helps him get through this difficult time in his life, and so does his teacher Bill. Bill recognizes an amazing intelligence in Charlie and as a result he gives Charlie different novels to read in addition to his required school reading. In turn, Charlie reads such books as, “On the Road,” “Naked Lunch,” “The Stranger,” “Walden,” and “The Fountainhead.” Charlie discusses these books, and in turn “Perks” becomes a great reference, educating the reader with an eclectic list of literature greats while at the same time helping the main character of the story grow as he reads these novels.
I wish some teacher in high school picked me out to guide and give me extra incentive in life. Charlie was lucky in that sense. As I think about it, Mr. Holden Caufield could have used a mentor as well. In fact, I imagine many teenagers wish the same thing: be it a parent, a grandparent, or a teacher, we all need elders to give us the wisdom of their experience. Despite the inevitable generation gap that occurs between the old and the young, people are still people and everyone goes through trials at some point in their life. Bill’s role in Charlie’s life quite effectively and beautifully fulfills this need for Charlie. Bill becomes Charlie’s grounding in many ways, and their friendship is a beautifully explored one.
Charlie’s life opens up tremendously when he follows his teacher Bill’s advice and goes to his high school’s football game, where he meets Sam and Patrick. Charlie finds Sam (as in Samantha) extremely beautiful and he has an enormous crush on her while Patrick becomes his first homosexual friend. Through Sam and Patrick, who are seniors, Charlie gets exposed to a whole different side of life: parties, homosexuality, drugs, drinking. Charlie’s mature, non-judgmental, and open-minded perspective on being straight while having a homosexual best friend, Patrick, is quite impressive and well written. Sam and Patrick even introduce Charlie to his first girlfriend, their good friend Mary Elizabeth. Since Charlie is such a self-reflective young man, he does not get out of control in the typical teenage fashion where a teenage kid discovers drugs and alcohol for the first time and goes “Animal House” crazy. In fact, whenever Charlie does delve too deep into any one vice (I wont spoil it to tell you which one), he is always hyper aware and self-reflective of what is happening to him. He knows when to stop his bad patterns before they get out of hand.
Charlie is an emotional teenager. In fact, who isn’t an emotional teenager during those years when ones hormones run rampant. Charlie takes the reader into a modern teenager’s world where we learn about his daily experiences with mix tapes; his viewpoint on movie stars; family bonding over the last episode of M*A*S*H; friend bonding at “The Big Boy;” the rites of passage at “The Rocky Horror Picture Show;” and masturbation.
There are some passages in the book that are reminiscent of a modern, “On the Road” spirit:
There is a feeling that I had Friday night after the homecoming game that I don't know if I will ever be able to describe except to say that it is warm. Sam and Patrick drove me to the party that night, and I sat in the middle of Sam’s pickup truck. Sam loves her pickup truck because I think it reminds her of her dad. The feeling I had happened when Sam told Patrick to find a station on the radio. And he kept getting commercials. And commercials. And a really bad song about love that had the word “baby” in it. And then more commercials. And finally he found this really amazing song about this boy, and we all got quiet.
Sam tapped her hand on the steering wheel. Patrick held his hand outside the car and made air waves. And I just sat between them. After the song finished, I said something.
“I feel infinite.”
And Sam and Patrick looked at me like I said the greatest thing they ever heard. Because the song was that great and because we all really paid attention to it. Five minutes of a lifetime were truly spend, and we felt young in a good way.”
Incidentally (a word that Charlie uses frequently in the telling of his tale), “On the Road” is one of the many books his teacher Bill assigned him to read.
The reader never really gets to know Charlie’s family too well, and it is a shame because while Charlie has a relatively good relationship with his parents (which seems rare for teenagers these days) we do not get to understand why they get along as well as they do. In tune with this point, the chapters where he discusses his family gatherings can drag on a bit and become a bit slow as a result. I think this is a direct result of the lack of deep character exploration of his parents and his relationship with them.
When I reached the end of the book, I felt the ending a bit undeserved and patched on at the end to wrap things up. However these aspects do not take away from the very interesting and quick page-turning read that is “Perks.” Although it is not a perfect book, I still highly recommend it.
“Perks” is not a “feel-good” day in the life tale of “kids these days.” Instead it is a more honest look at what your typical American teenager faces on a daily basis: the social pressures of drugs and alcohol; discovering ones sexuality; sexual and physical abuse; date rape; suicide. It is a beautifully written story, a very noteworthy debut of first-time novelist Stephen Chbosky.
“Perks” would certainly be categorized as a young adult story, as it is a story that is told through a teenager’s eyes with the raw intensity that comes with the hormonally dynamic teenage years. Young adults; those who are raising a young adult; and those who want to read about the pressures and issues that “kids these days” face, would certainly enjoy the well written and page-turning story that is “The Perks of Being a Wallflower.”
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