The Perks Of Being A Wallflower Essay

Even though the year was 2012, I don’t think that the high school experience ever changes when it is your first day. Speaking from my experience, it was awful. I of course got lost multiple times, was late to all my classes, and even showed up to the wrong class. The first couple of weeks that I was experiencing wasn’t going how I had planned it to be, I was struggling in my classes and I didn’t have anyone to talk to at lunch or in between classes. That was until one day when I came across the novel, The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, in which I felt like I was no longer alone or at least the only one who felt this way. Chbosky describes the events that Charlie, the main character, encounters from as he develops from child to adolescent, in which we all …show more content…
The setting of the novel is set in 1991 and based upon the main character, Charlie, a fifteen-year-old introvert who comes across new experiences as a freshman in high school. Due to plot points that focus on mature content such as depression, suicide, drug use, underage drinking, sex, as well as homosexuality the novel is banned from many school districts and even considered as a challenged book. However, many argued that because the novel is of a coming of age novel that represents growing up, children should not be censored of these subjects because these are occurrences that they could potentially face. This novel is like the classic that takes place in 1950, The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger due to the similarities between the two main characters and the style of the writings by both authors. Although, the two books contrast by how in The Catcher in the Rye, the main character Holden wants to protect the meaning of innocence, meanwhile in The Perks of Being a Wallflower, the main character Charlie faces these incidents where he is slowly losing his own