Adolescence in 'The Perks of Being a Wallflower'

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“I am writing to you because she said you listen and understand and didn't try to sleep with that person at that party even though you could have. Please don't try to figure out who I am. I don't want you to do that. I just need to know that people like you exist” (Chbosky). Pain can be both rational and irrational, by either design, or choice, and being able to be held within oneself is a kind of art form that many teenagers have masterfully fulfilled. Everyone’s high school years hold some painful memories within that time period. It’s unavoidable, because at some pain in one’s adolescence, a low is hit, and hit hard. The Perks of Being a Wallflower exemplifies the power of pain and joy in High School, where suffering is invoked by mistakes and tragedies throughout the character’s lives, as well as the ideological implications of being a teenager which truly make one feel invisible to the world, yet watched so closely, all at once.
Within films there’s always a slant toward what the director of each movie offers us as an implied inference towards what exactly he or she thinks is right and wrong, or ideologically sound or immoral. Characters and cultures are given perspectives on what societies’ ideological views correspond to each situation privy to them. The Perks of Being a Wallflower is akin to a John Hughes’s movie of this generation, in that it gives teenagers a voice to their pain, which is so relatable and scarily common within the lives of young adults. This voice is one that is never truly acknowledged, and what little voice is given to them is filtered through another adult, whether it is school rules, news reports, or even literature. Charlie, Patrick, and Sam are the tortured characters of the film, whom are deal...

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...re or less important than the adolescent one; nor are the age groups belonging to each respectively. Just as the characters speed-drive through the tunnels of their small town with their music blasting through their open windows, adolescence is just like driving into a tunnel: bright, shocking lights with no way out except the other side. And if you do emerge from that other side, you will always be older, though not always wiser, or a better person. These moments of living are easily forgotten and smothered by the other stresses pertinent at the other end of the tunnel. And looking at life in a bigger picture is, in a way, essential in order to feel gratitude. Bad and good things happen to every kind of person, from every clique to every country. It’s only a matter of recognizing the fact that we are alive, and essential, for this crazy story unfolding around us.

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