The Perks of Being a Wallflower - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Why do nice people choose the wrong people to date?"

~(Charlie)~

"Well--

we accept the love we think we deserve."

~(Mr. Anderson)~

"Can we make them know that they deserve more?"

~(Charlie)~

"We can try."

~(Mr. Anderson)~

"My doctor said we can't choose where we come from...

but we can choose where we go from there. 

I know it's not all the answers...

but it was enough to start putting these pieces together."

~(Charlie)~

The Perks of Being a Wallflower - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a coming-of-age epistolary novel written by American novelist Stephen Chbosky. It was published on February 1, 1999 by MTV. The story is narrated by a teenager who goes by the alias of "Charlie"; he describes various scenes in his life by writing a series of letters to an anonymous person, whom he does not know personally. The book was made into a film in 2012, starring Logan Lerman, Ezra Miller and Emma Watson, directed by the author.

The story explores topics such as introversion, abuse, drugs, sexuality, and the awkward times of adolescence.

The story takes place in a suburb of Pittsburgh during the early 1990s, Charlie's freshman year in a high school. Charlie is the eponymous wallflower of the novel. He is an unconventional thinker, and as the story begins he is shy and unpopular.

The novel has garnered a cult following and is widely considered a modern classic.

Charlie grows a lot during the story and learns how to "participate in life" as advised by Bill. As time goes on, he realizes as the end of school approaches that all of his friends and his sister will all be leaving for college. Sam gets accepted off the waiting list into Penn State. Before Sam leaves for the Summer, Charlie and Sam begin to have a sexual encounter. However, Charlie stops because he suddenly feels very strange, and he does not know why. After waking up the next day, he realizes that his Aunt Helen had molested him when he was younger. His mind cannot handle this, and he is hospitalized. He is eventually let out of the hospital, and says that he will be okay. When Patrick and Sam take Charlie through the tunnel again, this time with Charlie standing in the truck bed, he learns that he can go on with life without being scared, because he is more than a wallflower.

***

INVICTUS

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

William Ernest Henley is known to most people by virtue of this single poem.

As mentioned previously, Henley was hospitalized for tuberculosis. One of his legs was amputated in order to save his life; it was said to be very painful. Immediately after the amputation, he received news that another operation would have to be done on his other leg. However, he decided to enlist the help of a different doctor named Joseph Lister. Under Lister's care he was able to keep his other leg by undergoing intensive surgery on his remaining foot. While recovering from this surgery in the infirmary, he was moved to write the words of Invictus. This period of his life, coupled with the reality of an impoverished childhood, plays a major role in the meaning behind the poem; it is also the prime reason for this poem's existence.

***

“People can't,

unhappily, invent

their mooring posts,

their lovers and

their friends, anymore than they can invent

their parents.

Life gives these and also

takes them away

and the great difficulty

is to say Yes to life.”

~(James Baldwin)~

James Arthur Baldwin (August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987) was an American novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, and social critic
.

Baldwin's essays, such as the collection Notes of a Native Son (1955), explore palpable yet unspoken intricacies of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in Western societies, most notably in mid-20th-century America, and their inevitable if unnameable tensions with personal identity, assumptions, uncertainties, yearning, and questing. Some Baldwin essays are book-length, for instance The Fire Next Time (1963), No Name in the Street (1972), and The Devil Finds Work (1976)
.

His novels and plays fictionalize fundamental personal questions and dilemmas amid complex social and psychological pressures thwarting the equitable integration of not only blacks yet also of male homosexuals—depicting as well some internalized impediments to such individuals' quest for acceptance—namely in his second novel, Giovanni's Room (1956), written well before the equality of homosexuals was widely espoused in America. Baldwin's best-known novel is his first, Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953).

At 17, Baldwin came to view Christianity as falsely premised, however, and later regarded his time in the pulpit as a remedy to his personal crises. Still, his church experience significantly shaped his worldview and writing. For him, "being in the pulpit was like being in the theatre; I was behind the scenes and knew how the illusion was worked."

***

Calvinism

Predestination, in theology, is the doctrine that all events have been willed by God. John Calvin interpreted biblical predestination to mean that God willed eternal damnation for some people and salvation for others. Explanations of predestination often seek to address the so-called "paradox of free will," whereby God's omniscience seems incompatible with human free will.