Your life and everything it’s comprised of is the result of choices made by yourself or someone else's. This also pertains to the characters in Stephen Chbosky’s fictional epistolary novel The Perks of Being A Wallflower. This coming of age tale is composed of diary letters of an intelligent, awkward and traumatized 15-year-old boy named Charlie. Grieving the suicide of his only friend and death of his aunt leaves Charlie in an isolated state right before the start of high school. Fortunately, when school starts, Charlie becomes best friends with Sam and Patrick, who open up Charlie’s introverted and distressed personality. Additionally, the readers see all of Charlie's unique friendships blossom gradually, while he fights through his mental difficulties. This is a story that captures the anxiety and depth of adolescence, which reveals that the choices we make, not only affects you but also the people you’re surrounded by.
One way the theme is revealed is when Charlie’s sister, Candace gets abused by her boyfriend. From the beginning of the book, it was clear Candace and her
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From the start to finish of the book, Charlie adored Aunt Helen and grieves her death 7 years later, like it just happened yesterday. However, after Charlie has a psychotic breakdown, repressed memories of Aunt Helen came back to him. That’s when Charlie realized Aunt Helen had actually sexually abused Charlie when he was a child; just like how Aunt Helen was abused in her childhood. “It was done by someone who was very close to her… she finally told her dad. He didn’t believe her because of who it was. A friend of the family and the man kept coming over for visits” (Chbosky 90). Even though the man who chose to abuse Helen only directly affects himself and her, it also indirectly affects Helen’s parents, Charlie and Charlie’s family once they find