Being a young adult, constantly concerned about how you are perceived and attempting to fit it, is one of the most critically important and talked about moments in a person’s life. Stephen Chbosky’s Perks of Being a Wallflower is a extremely significant bildungsroman novel that explores the coming-of-age narrative. It fundamentally explores the realities of high school, friendships, and the issues of self-discovery and acceptance through its narrator who refers to himself as ‘Charlie’. Within the 300-page novel and, later, the hour-and-a-half film, the central character of Charlie experiences the importance of actively participating in life and realizing that each moment is critical within life. Through specific forms of narration that Chboksy
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If anything, the movie strengthens the novel as it visually aids the book given that there’s a lack of detail about surroundings and characters in the original form. Despite being transferred to film, the core of the narration remains unchanged through the usage of voice-overs, flashbacks, and unspoken detailing, like the specific books that Mr. Anderson gave Charlie to read. The film adaptation of Perks of Being a Wallflower qualifies more as an extension of novel rather than a specific director’s reading of the novel in that the original creator largely had control over the film adaptation. The 2012 film was only released in a limited number of theaters and can, for all intents and purposes, be considered an indie film. With that type of connotation, it allows for a more open interpretation of the film in relationship to the novel and enables the director to play on the critical points of the novel more clearly, like the fact that Charlie is an unreliable narrator. He’s in and out of his mind for most of the novel, sporadically experiencing flashbacks while attempting to participate more in …show more content…
Chbosky uses so many styles of narrative intentionally as it highlights the realities of growing up in that everything seems to be coming at you in full force all at once and it solidifies Charlie as a complex and unreliable narrator in his own story both in flashbacks and in his present. For the majority of the novel, Charlie is merely an observer in his own reality. As Patrick said, “You [Charlie] see things and you understand.” He’s both within and without of his own reality and life. We as reader receive detail after detail about a play that his brother completed during one of his college football games or (some other example) and yet he is unable (or unwilling) to discuss his own personal feelings outside of his love for Sam. He never refers to his mental health unless it is ‘getting bad again’ and consistently puts himself before others and thinks that’s the best way to show love, as Sam points out near the end of the film. Additionally, when Charlie begins to retreat back into himself after being told to stay away for a while by Patrick, we see Chbosky’s ways of communicating Charlie’s thoughts and feelings through the usage of the typewriter. There are several close-up shots of the typewriter being used to literally spell out Charlie’s depression and
If anything, the movie strengthens the novel as it visually aids the book given that there’s a lack of detail about surroundings and characters in the original form. Despite being transferred to film, the core of the narration remains unchanged through the usage of voice-overs, flashbacks, and unspoken detailing, like the specific books that Mr. Anderson gave Charlie to read. The film adaptation of Perks of Being a Wallflower qualifies more as an extension of novel rather than a specific director’s reading of the novel in that the original creator largely had control over the film adaptation. The 2012 film was only released in a limited number of theaters and can, for all intents and purposes, be considered an indie film. With that type of connotation, it allows for a more open interpretation of the film in relationship to the novel and enables the director to play on the critical points of the novel more clearly, like the fact that Charlie is an unreliable narrator. He’s in and out of his mind for most of the novel, sporadically experiencing flashbacks while attempting to participate more in …show more content…
Chbosky uses so many styles of narrative intentionally as it highlights the realities of growing up in that everything seems to be coming at you in full force all at once and it solidifies Charlie as a complex and unreliable narrator in his own story both in flashbacks and in his present. For the majority of the novel, Charlie is merely an observer in his own reality. As Patrick said, “You [Charlie] see things and you understand.” He’s both within and without of his own reality and life. We as reader receive detail after detail about a play that his brother completed during one of his college football games or (some other example) and yet he is unable (or unwilling) to discuss his own personal feelings outside of his love for Sam. He never refers to his mental health unless it is ‘getting bad again’ and consistently puts himself before others and thinks that’s the best way to show love, as Sam points out near the end of the film. Additionally, when Charlie begins to retreat back into himself after being told to stay away for a while by Patrick, we see Chbosky’s ways of communicating Charlie’s thoughts and feelings through the usage of the typewriter. There are several close-up shots of the typewriter being used to literally spell out Charlie’s depression and