Being My Own Best Friend: Isolation in The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Loneliness is something that many teenagers experience during their time in high school. Loneliness can shape one’s character in drastic ways, and can even dictate their personal decisions. The impact of loneliness is something that is explored in detail in The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky. Through the depiction of unhealthy relationships, irrational character behaviour, and declines in mental health, Chbosky illustrates the negative impact that loneliness has on young people with his characters.
To begin, the author of this novel demonstrates the negative impact of loneliness on young people by developing unhealthy relationships between his characters. …show more content…
This irrational behaviour is very evidently displayed on the evening after Charlie takes his sister to the abortion clinic. Charlie calls the phone number displayed in an infomercial, and wishes the woman on the other line a good night. To his surprise, “[she] hung up on me. And I didn’t mind a bit,” (122). It is not considered ‘normal’ behaviour for an individual to call the phone number in a commercial in hopes of finding company, instead of to purchase a product. Charlie feels so alone that he will take any form of interaction he can get, even if the conversation is artificial. His decision to call the sales phone number is completely irrational, and is caused by his personal feelings of isolation. Another example of loneliness causing strange actions is after Charlie has been away from his friends for a significant amount of time. Charlie reads the novel The Fountainhead in order to pass the time, but is having a hard time focusing on anything but a single line introducing Ian MacArthur. After cleaning his room multiple times in frustration, Charlie states that “I decided to leave Ian alone for a while because I was starting to get mad at him,” (166). The novel’s protagonist begins to see the fictional character in the book he is reading as someone he can genuinely be in a disagreement with, in his state of isolation. This train of thought is …show more content…
One way that the decline in mental health due to loneliness is demonstrated, is when Charlie takes notice of the way that his reaction towards people who are happy together is reflective of his feelings in general. He notes that when he sees a happy couple, “all you want is to always feel happy for them because you know that if you do, then it means you’re happy, too,” (96). Charlie often looks at the relationships of those around him, particularly that of Sam and Craig, in a negative light. Although it is only in indirect connection, the reader can assume that this negative outlook on what Sam and Craig have is due to Charlie’s personal negative feelings. His loneliness comes through in the way that he looks at other people’s happiness, and strongly indicates that he is not very happy, himself. Charlie also falls into drug use as a method for coping with his loneliness. In the novel he explains that, “after a week of not talking to anyone, I finally called Bob…I asked him if he had anything I could buy. He said he had a quarter ounce of pot left…I’ve been smoking it all the time since,” (139). Charlie’s isolation leads directly to his use of substances as a coping mechanism, and in turn the casual drug use becomes borderline addiction. Drug addiction is not only a mental illness in itself, but also generally comes hand in
Loneliness is something that many teenagers experience during their time in high school. Loneliness can shape one’s character in drastic ways, and can even dictate their personal decisions. The impact of loneliness is something that is explored in detail in The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky. Through the depiction of unhealthy relationships, irrational character behaviour, and declines in mental health, Chbosky illustrates the negative impact that loneliness has on young people with his characters.
To begin, the author of this novel demonstrates the negative impact of loneliness on young people by developing unhealthy relationships between his characters. …show more content…
This irrational behaviour is very evidently displayed on the evening after Charlie takes his sister to the abortion clinic. Charlie calls the phone number displayed in an infomercial, and wishes the woman on the other line a good night. To his surprise, “[she] hung up on me. And I didn’t mind a bit,” (122). It is not considered ‘normal’ behaviour for an individual to call the phone number in a commercial in hopes of finding company, instead of to purchase a product. Charlie feels so alone that he will take any form of interaction he can get, even if the conversation is artificial. His decision to call the sales phone number is completely irrational, and is caused by his personal feelings of isolation. Another example of loneliness causing strange actions is after Charlie has been away from his friends for a significant amount of time. Charlie reads the novel The Fountainhead in order to pass the time, but is having a hard time focusing on anything but a single line introducing Ian MacArthur. After cleaning his room multiple times in frustration, Charlie states that “I decided to leave Ian alone for a while because I was starting to get mad at him,” (166). The novel’s protagonist begins to see the fictional character in the book he is reading as someone he can genuinely be in a disagreement with, in his state of isolation. This train of thought is …show more content…
One way that the decline in mental health due to loneliness is demonstrated, is when Charlie takes notice of the way that his reaction towards people who are happy together is reflective of his feelings in general. He notes that when he sees a happy couple, “all you want is to always feel happy for them because you know that if you do, then it means you’re happy, too,” (96). Charlie often looks at the relationships of those around him, particularly that of Sam and Craig, in a negative light. Although it is only in indirect connection, the reader can assume that this negative outlook on what Sam and Craig have is due to Charlie’s personal negative feelings. His loneliness comes through in the way that he looks at other people’s happiness, and strongly indicates that he is not very happy, himself. Charlie also falls into drug use as a method for coping with his loneliness. In the novel he explains that, “after a week of not talking to anyone, I finally called Bob…I asked him if he had anything I could buy. He said he had a quarter ounce of pot left…I’ve been smoking it all the time since,” (139). Charlie’s isolation leads directly to his use of substances as a coping mechanism, and in turn the casual drug use becomes borderline addiction. Drug addiction is not only a mental illness in itself, but also generally comes hand in