What Changes Charlie in The Perks of Being a Wallflower, a Novel by Stephen Chbosky

The Perks of Being a Wallflower does a great job impersonating the life of an adolescent in his high school life through letters. Charlie, the main character, has suffer a great loss when he was in middle school of a close friend, and since the beginning of his high school life, he has wander alone. He is lost in his thoughts, and attempts to have a life with the ups and downs of being a teenager. When he meets Sam and Patrick his life changes significantly. Sam and Patrick are great friends to Charlie - even though they introduce him to alcohol and drugs - because they help him find himself by encouraging him to "participate", being there when he most needs them, and opening him to the life of a teenager.

As stated above, Sam and Patrick encourage Charlie to participate more in life, which helps Charlie appreciate the tiny things that come with life. Charlie demonstrates improvement with his social skills and the desire of living life when he comes across Sam and Patrick "i have been trying to "participate"" (Chbosky 30). Charlie is known for always thinking too much, and not expressing his thoughts, even Bill his English teacher remarks how he needs to participate in life.

With the encounter of Sam and Patrick, Charlie starts to attend to high school parties, and meet new people with different perspectives in their own future. He starts to understand "adult" stuff, and enjoy time "i feel infinite" with his friends (37). By being able to participate actively in these events, he starts to realize the importance of friendship and the feeling of not being lonely and having people who you can always count on.

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Incidentally, Charlie goes through many impacting moments through his life, and because of the support of Sam and Charlie he never loses himself. When the main character tries LSD, known as the hallucinating drug, he gets an anxiety attack in the library and afterwards, is helped by Sam and Patrick "I was s relieved. And [they] smiled" (109).

This demonstrates the affection Charlie feels for his best friends, even as he goes through an anxiety attack and starts to lose himself because Sam and Patrick permit him to have drugs in a party. When Sam helps him and tells him to not try LSD, again a sense of happiness can't be helped to be felt in Charlie's inner self. In addition, to stop the curiosity from being felt, in fact Charlie never tries LSD ever again or any kind of acid. If Sam wouldn't have helped Charlie in that specific moment, Charlie would have continue taking drugs as if nothing, not noticing the difficulties being presented in his state of depression and emptiness.

Lastly, the adventures Charlie goes because of Sam and Patrick makes Charlie grow up. Charlie states a very important fact when he comes out of the mentality hospital "even if we don't have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there" which shows his maturity (228). This displays that Charlie finally understands, that even if in life we are being thrown trash into our faces, it is not a good reason to give up. We choose our future and our destination and at the end, it's us, who we hold the power in our hands.

Charlie grows up, and doesn't lose himself because of the support given by Patrick and Sam which is verified when they encourage Charlie to participate more, are there for him when he needs it and they "bring him" to the teenage world of a high schooler. Charlie is known to have a very horrible experience that has an influence on him in many ways, especially on his decision taking, and because of that he wasn't able to live many specific moments. Because of Patrick and Sam Charlie understands that the past is the past and you should treasure the great memories and move forward.

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