Sunday, June 12, 2011

Revisiting Perks

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

I was happy to come across this article on Thought Catolog because The Perks of Being a Wallflower was one of my favorite books when I was younger. Even now I'll go back and read a passage or two and feel a sort of nostalgia for that time in my life when I had first discovered the book, and how nice it was to find I wasn't the only one with those same types of thoughts or feelings. It made me feel not-so-alone at a time in my life when I could very much relate to the main character of the book, Charlie.

For those of you not familiar with the story, I will give you a brief synopsis. Perks is a novel written as a series of letters from a narrator, Charlie, to an anonymous “friend.” Charlie is a teenager who is about to enter his freshman year of high school and he describes various scenes of his life over the course of one year in these letters. The events Charlie describes in his candid and bare-faced letters involve a mix of the usual and not-so-typical teenage problems: sex, drug use, loneliness, suicide, homosexuality, pregnancy, and, overall, the awkward times of adolescence. Charlie is the titular “wallflower” of the novel and we see everything through his unjaded and trusting eyes. In his first letter, Charlie writes, “So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I’m still trying to figure out how that could be.” This simple confession is, in essence, what the novel is all about. (read more)
(photo credit: Jasmine Raena)

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