The Perks of Being a Wallflower

      I have recently started this book, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, I already find it really interesting. In the book the character Charlie is beginning to write all of these letters to his "friend" who goes unnamed. He starts off by telling a little bit about his family. It seems as if he doesn't have the best home life. He says that his mother is always quiet and that his father sometimes hits him. Although he does talk about his great friendship with his Aunt Helen. He said that she was his favorite person in the world, I wonder why he says "was"? Charlie also discusses in the letters how he had this friend, Michael Dobson, that shot himself. There seems like a lot is going on in Charlie's life, but he acts as if it has no affect on him. I wonder if he is bottling up his feelings, or he just isn't a very expressive person.

      While I was reading I tried to focus a lot on the relationship between Charlie and his Aunt Helen. He is always talking about her in past tense. As I pointed out earlier he said "My Aunt Helen was my favorite person in the whole world." he also goes on and is saying things like, she used to do that, she used to do this. I wonder if she is dead or something, even though he did not mention anything about her death. Although he did say that she started living with them because something really bad happened to her, he eventually found out what that bad thing was, but does not tell what it is in the letter. I wonder if their relationship was like a friend relationship or if she was like a second mother to him? Did their relationship change after he found out the reason she was living with them? Maybe he talks about her in past tense because they do not speak anymore, or because she isn't his favorite person anymore.

     Other relationships I focused on were the relationships between Charlie and his mother and father. The interaction he mentions between his mother are about how she got drunk one time and told Charlie why Aunt Helen is living with them. The only other things he said about his mother is how she remains quiet during a lot of family arguments and how she cries during TV shows. The interactions that Charlie mentions between him and his father are how his father slapped and yelled at him for "hurting his aunt Helen's feelings."

     Charlie has this really strange and dysfunctional family, but he keeps on saying to himself a lot of kids have it worse. I wonder why he is so defensive of the family that really doesn't treat him all that great? I guess that even in my world a lot of kids do have it worse, but Charlie does fall into the category of having " a bad home life." Maybe there are some aspects of his home life that make it okay, but I'm not sure. I look forward to seeing other sides of Charlie's personality through his relationships with different characters in the book.