Elizabeth Gooch!

Elizabeth Gooch
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Stephen Chbosky
Realistic Fiction
Just Right
Just Finished #213

1. In the ending of Perks of Being a Wallflower the main character Charlie is writing about the last couple days of his freshmen year in high school. All of his friends, who are seniors seem to be going through hard times so he is trying his best to comfort them. For example, his friend Patrick is going through a rough breakup with the captain of the football team, Brad. Also, his sister has a pregnancy scare with an abusive boyfriend. On top of all that, the girl he loves, Sam found out that her college boyfriend has been cheating on her for a long time now. After all of the problems are sorted out though he starts to crack under all his thoughts. For this leads to drugs and then he finds himself back in a hospital.

2. I found this book extremely intriguing. One factor to this conclusion was because of the unique format of the book. Throughout the whole book it is composed of letters from Charlie to an unknown character. Overall, Charlie is a very interesting person, to say the least. He writes about his struggles, good times, activities and his thoughts. Also, he writes about many things he notices about people and things that other people probably wouldn't notice. Although these thoughts scare him because he starts to get nervous. This character trait was another thing that kept me interested throughout his whole story.  This is a new author to me and I would be interested to explore any other novels he has written.

3. I think one of the main themes of this book is Loss of Innocence. This theme appears throughout the book within the main character, Charlie. He experiences some tragic events in his childhood that cause some mental and social problems. He wasn't given much of a childhood and his mind matured faster than most of kids his age. His aunt assaults him when he is young and that has a great effect on him as he matures. Also, his best and only friend at the time, Michael commits suicide while they are in middle school and that leaves him feeling lonely and confused. This theme also appears in other characters as well though, such as when Sam is assaulted by her fathers friend, and also his aunt Helen is assaulted as well.

4. My favorite character is Patrick. He is my favorite character because he is always the jokester of their group and makes Charlie feel excepted in the first place. Also he is a real perky person who is not afraid to be himself. Although he does get pretty sad after his breakup, he is always happy throughout the rest of the book. Overall, I love his personality and the role he plays in Charlie's social development.

5. My least favorite character is Brad, Patrick's boyfriend. I don't like Brad because he never admits to being with Patrick and although Patrick puts up with this for some time, he eventually cracks. Also, I hate how he makes fun of Patrick in the cafeteria and then it gets into a fight. I think he should be himself and stop worrying about what other people think of you. In addition, I think he is being unfair to his "girlfriend" by not telling her that he is gay. She may really like him and would be upset if she new he was keeping this from her. Overall, I believe if he wasn't so protective of his social status he would be much happier.

6. The ending of this book was definitely not what I expected. Throughout the whole book Charlie always refers to these wonderful memories of his aunt and how she was the only one who understand him. But at the ending he realizes these, what he thinks were dream, were actually memories of his aunt assaulting him at a young age. Although, he was too young to remember so he thinks these memories are just dreams. This conclusion was not at all what I expected considering how kind he describes her as. Although, near the ending he does find it strange that his physiologist keeps asking about his childhood, rather than what was going on right then. Which, could be considered as a clue from the author of the unexpected ending.