The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Reading Response

By Liam McAllister

Many teenagers are sheltered and do not know a lot about the real world, so they experience it in a different way from kids who do. So they make bad choices that they do not realize are bad choices. In The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, the protaganist, Charlie, shifts from being an innocent and oblivious teenager to a more knowing and experienced one, and along the way makes slightly immoral choices.

Charlie doesn’t have any knowledge of drugs or experience so when he makes new friends who do drugs, he makes bad choices by going along with them. He is oblivious to many things. At a party with his new friends, he tells us: “I ate the brownie, and it tasted a little weird, but it was still a brownie, so I still liked it. But this was not an ordinary brownie. Since you are older, I think you know what kind of brownie it was.” Somebody more exposed to the world would know that it was a pot brownie. Charlie starts to smoke because his friends do. This represents the start of his change from sheltered to worldly. He starts to do more serious drugs like LSD as well as marijuana. “A few days ago, I went to see Bob to buy more pot.” As Charlie does drugs more frequently, he begins to realize his own loss of innocence. When his brother asks Charlie if he’s high and his mom says not to use that language in front of him, Charlie thinks that’s strange because he believes he’s the only person in his family who has been high.

Charlie has no knowledge of sex by not understanding when things happening around him are sexual. When Charlie is at his brother’s party he is told to stay in his room. A couple comes in and asks if they can use his room,  and he tells them he was told to stay in the room. Then they ask if they could use it with him in it and Charlie says he doesn’t see why not. The couple starts to have sex. Any person who is less sheltered would guess that the couple is going to have sex, but he is clueless. When Charlie’s sister gets together with a guy, Charlie sees them having sex but doesn’t know what he is seeing. The book states, “He was on top of her, and her legs were draped over either side of the couch.” And Charlie didn’t know what they were doing while somebody with knowledge would.

In conclusion Charlie transforms from an untainted teenager to a more self-aware young adult. Lots of the things he experiences are new to him, so he makes his own choices about them, which are sometimes bad. Ultimately he matures and is more aware of himself and the world. Teenagers could learn from Charlie’s experience and have more knowledge about the world so that they don’t make too many bad choices.