Monday, February 28, 2011

Perks of Being a Wallflower STAARS

Tim Latina
Mrs. Siragusa
2/28/11
2AC

Subject - Growing up
Theme - As a child starts to go into adolescence he or she may start to experience new feelings. Good or bad many a child will feel new things.
Audience - Young Adult
Attitude - Confusion , grief
Rhetorical Strategy - characterization
Textual Evidence - "In the hallways, I see the girls wearing the guys' jackets and I think about the idea of property. And I wonder if anyone is really happy. I hope they are. I really hope they are." (pg 23 - 24)
"She would be alive today if she just bought me one present like everybody else. She would be alive if I were born on a day that didn't snow. I would do anything to make this go away." (pg 92)

The Perks of Being a Wallflower, a bildungsroman novel by Stephen Chbosky, deals with the coming of age of a young boy who has just stepped into high school and the new experiences he has in his life. We know all of the inner most thoughts and feelings of Charlie because the novel is set as a group of letters written to an unknown person. We may not know who this person is, but Charlie trusts him these feelings. Chbosky uses the rhetorical strategy of characterization to help better understand who Charlie is and what type of person he is. On pages 23 - 24 we see how Charlie feels with him saying " And I wonder if anyone is really happy. I hope they are. I really hope they are." From this we get the sense that Charlie doesn't know if people are really happy with what they do or if they just go along with what other people tell them and how they treat them. He wants to believe that people are happy but he can't accept the fact that they are. Another feeling the Charlie starts feeling is grief. We see this when he says "She would be alive if I were born on a day that didn't snow. I would do anything to make this go away." (pg 92). This quote that Charlie has massive amounts of grief in his life thinking that he is the cause for his aunts death. This helps to show that Charlie is very emotional and maybe even suicidal with what he is saying. With this Charlie is given more depth to his character. The biggest thing though is we learn why he gets emotional whenever he talks about his Aunt Helen and now we can why. Since he has thought this for so long, we can see why he is also removed a bit from society because of all the grief striking him. Charlie relates to Holden Caulfield in J.D. Salinger’s novel The Catcher in the Rye because both of them are removed from society and both have experienced the loss of someone they really loved in their life.

The novel, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, shows us the many experiences that a high school student might face during his transformation into adulthood. Since he is transforming from a child who is sheltered into an adult who has many freedoms, he is going into the stage of adolescence he has more freedoms than he had as a child. He starts to experience new things. When he goes to the Secret Santa party he tries brandy for the first time in his life. Now he didn't have to try it but he does any way to fit in. He could of easily declined it but he wants more freedoms now. Even though he has these more freedoms he doesn't have to partake in these activities. Even though he wants to do new things he doesn't have to and shouldn't feel like he has to either.

Question: Why is it that Bill has taken such an interest in Charlie? Also, why does he have Charlie write papers if they're not going into the grade book?

No comments:

Post a Comment