perks of being a wallflower

Epistolary Novel

• How does this style affect our relationship to Charlie?
• Intimacy vs. Anonimity
• "I just need to know that someone out there listens and understands" (2).

Reliable Narrator

• Is Charlie a reliable narrator?
• Compared to Holden, Sammy, Ponyboy?
• "I am both happy and sad and I'm still trying to figure out how that could be" (2).

Participation

• "Sometimes people use thought to not participate in life" (24)
• "Charlie, we accept the love we think we deserve" (24).
• "I feel infinite" (32).

Untitled Slide

• "Charlie, we accept the love we think we deserve" (24).
• "He's a wallflower" (37).

Capacity

• "Sometimes, I look at my parents now and wonder what happened to make them the way they are" (52).

Parenting

• "I don't know if it's better to have your kids be happy and not go to college. I don't know if it's better to be close with your daughter or make sure that she has a better life than you do" (60).

Music & Books

• "Asleep," "Landslide," The Great Gatsby, A Separate Peace
• "I thought about how many people have loved those songs. And how many people got through a lot of bad times because of those songs" (62).
• "I like to think that when I'm old, I will be able to look at all these tapes and remember those drives" (93).

Infinity

• "And all the books you've read have been read by other people. And all the songs you've loved have been heard by other people. And that girls that's pretty to you is pretty to other people. And you know that if you looked at these facts when you were happy, you would feel great because you are describing 'unity'."

Teen Pregnancy

• "...how her face looked when she realized she was in love with that boy. And then I wondered how her face would look when she came out from behind those doors."
• "this was the first time anyone ever counted on me for anything" (118).

Mary Elizabeth

• "The only thing she asked me the whole time was whether or not I wanted to kiss her good night" (114).
• "she asked me very long questions that were really just her ideas with a question mark put at the end" (128).

Fountainhead

• "I would die for you. But I won't live for you" (169).
• "I think the idea is that every person has to live for his or her own life and then make the choice to share it with other people. Maybe that is what makes people 'participate'" (169).

Presence

• "It's like you're not even there sometimes ...You can't just sit there and put everybody's lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love...You have to do things" (200).

The End

• "The kind of person who would understand how they were better than a diary because there is communion and a diary can be found" (206).
• "And I was really there. And that was enough to make me feel infinite" (213).