Perspectives

There are many different ways to put The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky into perspective. 

You might choose to focus on the literary movement and style to which the novel belongs. Chbosky’s novel belongs to the realist movement and shows many characteristics of this. 

You could also focus on relating the novel to other texts with similar themes. Examples are Nick Hornby’s novel High Fidelity and Penelope Lively’s short story “Clara’s Day”. These texts also focus on the theme of growing up.

Finally, you might relate the novel to the 2012 movie adaptation starring Logan Lerman as Charlie, Ezra Miller as Patrick, and Emma Watson as Sam. The movie resembles the novel quite a lot since Stephen Chbosky wrote the script, but it focuses more on the relationship between the three teenagers and leaves out other elements from the book, such as Charlie’s relationship with his sister.

You can read more about each option on the following pages.