The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1999

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapters 1-5

Part 1, Chapters 6-10

Part 2, Chapters 11-20

Part 2, Chapters 21-25

Part 3, Chapters 26-37

Part 4, Chapters 38-51 and Epilogue

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Quiz

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Discussion Questions

Themes

The Secrecy of Abuse and Molestation

Abuse is a constant theme throughout the novel. Whether it’s physical or sexual in nature, the abuse that each character faces colors much of Charlie’s coming-of-age experience. The most influential abuse in Charlie’s life comes from the hands of his aunt Helen. While Charlie represses the fact that his aunt sexually abused him when he was a child, it’s clear that as a teenager, the abuse directly influenced how he interacts with those around him.

For much of the novel, Charlie is an observer of his own life rather than a participant. Rather than acting on what he wants, he tends to let experiences happen to him. This can be seen when he dates Mary Elizabeth. Despite not liking her, he continues to see her because he can’t be honest with what he wants. This again happens when he lets Patrick kiss him. Charlie lets it happen because he thinks he’s being a good friend to Patrick. These experiences reflect how Charlie’s childhood abuse took away his ability to act on what he wants as an adult and to set healthy boundaries. Rather than actively pursuing his desires and standing up for himself, Charlie seems paralyzed for most of the novel and continually a victim of his feelings and circumstance.

The other abuses in the novel hit close to home for Charlie, even though he doesn’t experience them himself. When he is younger, his older brother has a party. During this time, he witnesses a high school boy force his girlfriend to perform fellatio. After recalling this event to his friend Sam, he realizes it was rape. Charlie wants to tell someone about this moment, but Sam says it’s complicated, so he doesn’t. His sister is physically abused at the hands of her boyfriend, who slaps her across the face. She tells Charlie to keep it a secret. Finally, Sam reveals to Charlie that her dad’s friend kissed her when she was 7. Like similar moments, he is expected to keep it a secret. In this way, the abuse that each character faces throughout the novel creates a culture of secrecy and repression. This manifests in Charlie’s character when his teacher points out how Charlie thinks too much and doesn’t “participate”(24) in his own life. That is, he lives inside his own head more than he acts.

Coming of Age and Moral Ambiguity

In his first letter, Charlie writes: “[T]his 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” (2). Feeling simultaneously happy and sad is a constant theme for Charlie, one that leads him to feel confused about how he should feel in many situations. This idea is most obvious with Charlie’s aunt Helen. Throughout the novel, Charlie adores his aunt Helen. Not only did let him stay up late as a kid and watch Saturday Night Live, but she also always bought him special gifts and hugged him—things his own parents didn’t do often. These memories make Charlie feel happy. However, once Charlie remembers Aunt Helen sexually abused him as a child, he feels a sad. Yet, amidst this sadness, he still loves his aunt Helen and is reluctant to blame her abuse on his own mental health issues. He says that if he blames her, he would also have to blame the man that molested her as a child, or her father for hitting her as a child. And despite everything, he still feels happy for having had her in his life.

In this way, his simultaneous happiness and sadness regarding his aunt Helen demonstrates a deeper moral confusion. That is, Charlie knows he should be sad about what happened and mad at his aunt Helen, but he is also grateful for the good times. He knows he should blame her, but at the same time he is aware that many factors led to her doing what she did. He was a victim at the hands of his aunt Helen, but she has also been a victim. Feeling these mixed emotions leads Charlie to decide that everyone’s experience is their own: “And even if somebody has it much worse, that doesn’t really change the fact that you have what you have. Good and bad” (211).

This theme is also seen when his grandfather tells him the story about how he hit Charlie’s mom and aunt when they were little and got bad grades at school. Afterwards, both his mom and aunt got good grades and went to college. Charlie can’t decide if it’s sad and wrong that his grandfather hit them, or if it’s good because it kept them on the right track: “I don’t know if that’s good or bad. I don’t know if it’s better to have your kids be happy and not go to college. I don’t know if it’s better to be close with your daughter or make sure that she has a better life than you do. I just don’t know” (60).

Friends, Family, and Identity

Throughout the novel, Charlie continually tries to navigate the social interactions between himself, his family, and his friends. These interactions either affirm or destroy Charlie’s sense of worth as an individual. In this way, Charlie’s friends and family are the foundation of his self-esteem and dictate how he views the world. In the beginning of the novel, the suicide of Charlie’s best friend, Michael, causes him to go into his freshmen year feeling exceptionally alone. This feeling is only heightened by his distant relationship with his sister and the fact that his older brother is away at college. However, once Charlie becomes friends with Sam and Patrick, he begins to find a place of belonging. This feeling is reinforced as he and his sister grow closer after her abortion. Yet, more than anything, this idea is most dramatically demonstrated when Charlie is ostracized from his friend group after hurting Mary Elizabeth. Since Charlie found his high school identity through his friendships with Sam, Patrick, and the others, once those people are gone from his life, he doesn’t know who he is anymore. He starts smoking a lot of pot and cigarettes, and he can no longer do the things he once did, like go to The Rocky Horror Picture Show or the Big Boy. In this way, being separated from his friends reveals that Charlie’s identity was a compilation of everyone else around him—just like the mixtapes he cherishes.