The Perks of Being a Wallflower: Challenged

The novel Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky, should be a challenged book because of excessive sexual content and drug use, but it does address difficult social situations that some teens could most likely relate to.

The unique and difficult social situations that are presented in the novel gives many teenagers something deep and impactful that can be related to in their daily lives. In the book, the main character, Charlie, has made many new friends since starting high school. Before this, he used to have trouble getting to know people, and he is reflecting on his past and how it is looking a lot like his present, because his friends aren’t talking to him because of the way he treated his girlfriend. He writes in his journal, “I don’t know how much longer I cam keep going without a friend.  I used to be able to do it very easily, but that was before I knew what having a friend was like. It’s much easier not to know things sometimes. And to have french fries with your mom be enough.” (Chbosky 144). Charlie is lonely because of the social mistakes that he made while he was with his friends, just like earlier in his life when he really had nobody except “mom”. He had been lonely before, but that was before he knew what friends were like, as he says in the quote. Friends are very important in a young persons life, and they can influence new ideas and other things that living in your own head won’t help you with at all at all. He has lived without friends for most of his life, but now that he has tasted it, he cannot go on any “longer” without them. Most teenagers could probably attest to the same idea of loneliness and being in outsider in an insiders world. In his “old”, friendless life, Charlie could get by with just having “french fries” with his mother, which means that his social life included going to restaurants with his family, and doing nothing else. This is a very sad reality, but he and many others have definitely lived with it. His problem is that he had great friends for a time, but because of his mistakes, the feeling is even more bittersweet. This bluntly retold story of Charlie’s difficult social standings could easily be related to by many teens, and this is important because the main point of these kinds of books is to have the people reading the novel picture themselves in the shoes of the characters. This is a spectacular book for that purpose, because of the very diverse, changing, and relatable characters found in the pages. The way these characters interact with each other are what makes this book special and relatable to teens everywhere. By just documenting Charlie’s experience’s in one spectacular year of high school, Chbosky has created a special mix of tough social situations all wrapped up into one book that it is almost too much for Charlie to bear day to day. And again, the most important thing is to make it relatable to other teenagers lives, and the book makes it very easy for young adults everywhere to make the connection.