THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER

BOOK REVIEW

The Perks of Being a Wallflower remains one of the most poignant and popular coming-of-age stories from the 1990s. The author of this book is Stephen Chbosky born in 1970. To date The Perks of Being a Wallflower is his only novel.

Charlie, the main character of the book writes for the duration of one year letters about him and his life to a person who is unknown for him. In doing this Charlie, who characterizes by friends as a "wallflower" get the role of an observer.
The book discusses a variety of serious themes such as teenage suicide, drug usage, mistreatment and abuse of children in the family, concealed, because forbidden homosexuality and also the loneliness of teenagers in general. The book deal with problems of young people, which mostly remain unresolved.
The story is formatted in a letter format, which is different, but very good. This really gives the reader a close-up look into the world through the eyes of Charlie. We know exactly how he is feeling, what he is feeling, and why.
The words in the book aren´t confusing, which makes the book easy to read. The Perks of Being a Wallflower definetly makes you think. I think the main message of this story has to do with staying true to yourself, and not living up to other people´s expectations.
I really like this book and I would recommend this novel to anyone who likes books about teenagers. I think it could be enjoyed by anyone from age of fourteen upwards.

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THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER

DESCRIPTION OF CHARLIE

The main character in the novel named Charlie is a very interesting and likeable character. Emotional, diffident, and small are all words that could be used to describe Charlie´s personality at first, but as the time rolls on, some of Charlie´s personality traits to change somewhat.
At the beginning he sees his environment through the eyes of a child and discovers so contradictions in things over which normal people no longer think about, they are simply routine.That brings him a lot of problems and he also doesn´t know why he is different. Charlie is burdened with some emotional instability. He often cries, for what most people would things see as “stupid reasons”. Charlie is trying to figure out the world, and how everyone works. He tends to sit on the side lines and just watch people, wondering what is going on in their life. He does this until his teacher tells him that he should try to participate, in stead of just observing. When Charlie meets his new friends Sam and Patrick, he tries to participate more, and observe less. From now on he starts to go on parties and he starts smoking and taking drugs. He lies to his parents, what he didn´t do before, he go on dates, learn about sex, homosexuality, friendship and other things. Through Sam and Patrick Charlie experiences things that he never would have done if he hadn´t found them, also negative things. Till the end of the book he developes to another person.

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Correction of the 2nd exam

Violence and violence in the media

There are many discussions about violence in the media, because whenever there is a horrible crime people start to blame movies. Violence is part of our daily lives, but where are the problems and what can we do ?

Michael Medved is an opponent of violent movies. He says that Hollywood tells us four big lies. In some points I agree with Medved´s attack on the media, but I´m also critical of one. The first lie which Hollywood tells us is that these violent movies don´t influence us. So I totally agree with Medved because everyday you can read in the newspaper about “copycatkillers”. They imitate some scenes of their favourite movie, because of curiosity. The second lie is that violent movies only shows reality. Medved claims that it´s absolutely wrong to argue that violence in movies only show the reality and I agree with him. Often the scenes are depicted far too exaggerated and unrealistic. In addition it´s also nonsense that only violent movies are succesful, which is the third big lie. Everybody knows that non-violent films are often much more popular and the evidence of this are Disney films. So finally to the last lie which say that you don´t have to watch violent movies. In contrast to Michael Medved I think that it is possible to escape this violence and reading about such films in magazines is quite different to watching them.

We also have to think about why we are living in a violent society. Theories say that violence is something that we learn. We hear about violence, see it, experience it and also imitate it. In addition it is also an instinct, it will always be with us and it is necessary for survival. Moreover, violence is the result of frustration. When we don´t get what we want we become frustrated,and this frustration leads to aggressive behaviour.

Nowadays we can notice that more and more children get violent. In my opinion we can reduce this violence if parents start to forbid their children to watch violent movies, instead of that they should spend more time with their kids. I think that parents have to be only good role models.

To conclude, I want to say, that we will never live in an absolute harmony, but we really should try to do it.