The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky, is a novel about socially unmotivated Charlie, who is learning how to live life for the first time. He has never really been a part of anything, and this book is about him getting that chance. When I first began to read this book, I could not figure out why it became so popular. It wasn't written extraordinarily, and the plot line just wasn't that interesting. Still I kept going, and it eventually dawned on me. It was just so completely real. And through this way of writing, Stephen Chbosky managed to get me hooked on the life of 16 year old Charlie.
The original things that annoyed me about the book all had to do with Charlie's character. He was pretty strange, and to be honest I was a little insulted that a 16 year old was expected to have as low an intelligence level as he seemed to have. But I came around to the letter-for-every-chapter style of writing, and the book's quirky and overall very genuine characters.
The things that hit me as being so real had to do a lot with the way Charlie's thoughts kept him locked in his head. He'd be in a very bad mood, and that would lead to him spending the whole day trying to figure out why. Another example would be the way when he wanted to block out a certain thought or feeling, he had to do something else to occupy himself, like reading until he was so tired that he couldn't possibly do anything but sleep. Although it may not always be as severe as it is with Charlie, I definitely know what it feels like to have trouble not getting lost in my thoughts.
The author also seemed to get lost in his own thoughts at times. Sometimes I wondered if he might even lose the reader when he left them with half-formed ideas and random pieces of information. In the end, this just made the book so much easier to relate to, because it was like you were really inside Charlie's head. In a lot of books you really have to infer how the character is feeling, but with Charlie, he'd just tell you, no matter how random it was. Charlie was so real that it made the book more real, and overall, better.
Wow, nice thinking!
ReplyDeleteI think that "real" characters are always the best (actually, I just wrote about that in my blog post!). I really want to read this book--everyone I've talked to have said it's great. It's always nice to be really in the head of a character and see their thoughts as they're thinking them. Charlie seems like a great character to relate to, and I love being able to do that.
One of my favorite books is Flowers for Algernon. I can't really relate to the main character but he is still a very "real" character. When a character seems real, you really get attached to them
Anyway, great blog! I'll definitely read the book soon!
I really wanted to read "Perks Of Being A Wallflower" and your blog really made me interested in the story. I really liked how you added your opinions your emotions towards the character. How you reacted to the character. Almost like Charlie was a real person. You added what you didn't like about the story and what you did.
ReplyDeleteSince I've never read the book before I can't really agree and disagree with your blog post but I can tell you backed up your opinion of the character and how your relating to Charlie.
Great blog post :)