The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Just now I finished the book “the perks of being a wallflower”. A few days early I was just randomly searching on the internet where I found a trailer of a movie named “The perks of being a wallflower”. After reading some details I found out that the film is an adoption of a novel by Stephen Chboskey. The film is directed by the same author and stars Logan Lerman and Emma Watson. I have never read a book that has been adapted into a movie. Out of curiosity I just searched for its .pdf file and fortunately found it and started reading. The lingual style of the book is real simple and it is written in such a flow that it simply captured my attention. So, I started reading it.
The book is in fact a series of letters that have been written by central character of the novel ‘Charlie’ to a person he has never met or talked or knew. He is a very nervous kid who is in search of friends after the demise of his very best friend Michael.
Following things just came into my mind and I thought that I should do little scribbling myself. What I felt after reading this book is right here and it is you people who have to tell me what does this book really depicts…
It’s a book about things “books, music and girls”. At some places it is more than that. It gives you an inside of a kid who ‘thinks too much’ and gets ‘panicky’. It outlines the life of a first year student of high school and things he comes up with and cannot run away. The book teaches us to participate in life but it feels to be more of sarcasm then what has been put into the book, because it teaches us so many things other than participating. Like being there for friends and what friendship really means. Charlie, protagonist of the novel is actually a person who is always caring for others and is giving a helping hand to whatever his friends are coping with. This thing does affect his relationship with Sam but I think it is the innocence in his character that really makes this novel worthwhile to read.
The book teaches us through Charlie little things which go unnoticed by us ‘the common people’ and how they affect the moral structure of the society and how Charlie always tries to not think all of this but it keeps coming to his mind. The good, bad and the ugly experiences he enjoys with people and how different things upset him. If we think in our world these things do matter to us and affect us in different ways. Like many of us feel like to have someone by their side in distress and tension who can pacify our sorrows and ease our pain, and that many of us don’t find that ‘someone’ by our side. It is like people here care no more for others than they do for themselves and this is what makes Charlie special. This is what a wallflower really does; provides you with a sense of serenity while not drawing any attention to you.
The book also touches some morbid and worrying aspects like the lives of 16 year olds who are taking drugs, vine and other stuff and getting high. Things like having sex in this age of adolescence and the feelings it imparts in the kids. The guilt they feel when they masturbate for the first time and how they are always talking and thinking about girls and partying and ‘living’ life. They don’t care about what is happening in the world and what is their role in it or what they can do to better the society in which they live in. The book actually has no moral sentiments from which to draw any values, rather it is the depiction of this these moralities in the thinking and feelings of Charlie.
The relationship of Charlie with his family is shown to be too remote because he is always running for his friends whenever something came up in his mind and he just wanted to know that his family loves him and he loves his family and that’s it. His dad is busy in his work and when he does come home, he sees hockey game without his son because “he asks too many questions”. He did not attend any party with his family except for thanksgiving and Easter and some other traditional parties. The family didn’t go for any outing. I didn’t notice any time when the mother asked to his son that what is really happening with him and why is his attitude like this and he never found his family worthy enough to share his inside passions or feelings with them.
It tells us the story of Don Juan that Sam’s (a friend of Charlie) boyfriend was hiding from her. I don’t how much this book represents family and social structure of West but it feels so strange to read all the details. (It is you guys who have to enlighten me on this very fact). May be because here (in Pakistan) people don’t think about their actions and ‘living their lives’ more than the hardships they bear in catering the bread and butter for their family. And in contrast to this worried and hard environment they still smile and ‘live’ what they really want to live. This difference I am feeling after reading this book might be because of the completely different social structure that I have been brought up and I think I would not have been different if I have been born there. And I thank Allah very much for this that I am not born so much blinded by the perks of this world.
Overall the book has taught me in many ways and I hope that it does this to other readers also.