April 27th: A Lost Letter From 'The Perks of Being A Wallflower'

PROFESSOR FEEDBACK:
“This voice is absolutely masterful. Doesn’t put a foot wrong. Make up your own character who does something like this and you’ll be a millionaire... Methodological commentary really shows the legwork.”

CONTEXT:
A sensitive, mentally ill teenager is reeling after making a social gaffe which caused a fallout in his new friend group. He can no longer contact them, or participate in the sing-along midnight screenings of Rocky Horror they once enjoyed together. He is left to dwell on his mistakes, and on the suicide of his only other friend, who died the previous year.

STORY TEXT:

April 27, 1992

Dear friend,

I’m sorry to be writing so soon after my last letter, but I still feel terrible. And I don’t know what to do. I hope you’re not upset about this. Talking to you is just one of the few ways I have left to not feel so awful. I don’t really know if that’s a good or bad thing.

Like I said before, I’ve been smoking a lot of the pot that I bought from Bob. It doesn’t help much, so I don’t know why I do it. Maybe just to leave my head for a while. I think that’s what they call self-medicating, where people drink lots of alcohol or do lots of drugs to feel better about things. Or make life easier. For some reason other people look down on this, which I don’t really understand. I think that whatever you have to do to make yourself feel okay, is okay. So long as you don’t hurt anyone.

It could be that other people have the right idea, and that the only medicine you should take is the kind prescribed by a doctor. That’s just a difficult idea for me because I don’t know if my medication helps very much and I feel very bad about having to take it. Which is what I really wanted to talk to you about.

Every night, at dinner, my mom gives me two pills. I have to swallow them at the table so that my dad can watch. My sister and mom are nice and pretend like they’re looking somewhere else, but it’s really hard not to feel like they’re watching too.

It’s like those old movies in mental hospitals, where the nurse asks the patient to take his medicine, and he says that he doesn’t want to take the pills because they make him feel like someone else. And the nurse says very sweetly that it doesn’t matter what he thinks because they’re good for him and he has to take them. And then she checks under his tongue to make sure he’s not hiding them and if he’s hiding them the other nurses hold him down. Or maybe he gets shocked.

As you can imagine, this is very upsetting to me.

When I started seeing a psychologist again, my mom said that she was here for me and that she loved me and I could talk to her about anything. So tonight I tried explaining this to her. And I don’t know why, but I got very upset. This made my dad very upset too, because I was hurting my mom. Which I didn’t mean to do because I love her and all I wanted was to take my medicine on my own. That’s all I wanted. I didn’t mean to cry but that’s just something that seems to happen to me.

My dad was very stern and as you know he isn’t the type of person to argue with. So I just stood there in the middle of the room and tried to stop being a bad son.

He said that the pills are very expensive.

And I nodded.

And he said that the doctor prescribed this medicine because I am in a certain state of mind.

And I nodded.

And he said that because I am in a certain state of mind, I am liable to make bad decisions. And he’s not going to take that chance.

This made me very uncomfortable, but I nodded because I understood. And I was sorry.

When my dad has that type of conversation with me, it’s very final. So we’re not going to talk about it anymore. Things will go back to normal. I will go to dinner and take my medicine and listen to him talk about work and rugby and then I will leave.

I tried calling Patrick after all this happened but I hung up before he could answer. As you know, no one is talking to me right now. And even if they did I would probably just make things worse, because that’s what I always seem to do.

So instead I went downstairs and watched a movie on our old Betamax player. We mostly use the VCR now, but there’s something special to me about Betamax because it seems like everyone else forgot about it. Halfway through the movie I have to switch the tape, but that’s okay because at least someone is using it.
The movie I watched was The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which I bought with the last of my Easter money. That way I could be with everyone without actually bothering them. I have to tell you about this because if I don’t I’ll go to bed thinking about my medication and not my friends and that’s not something I want to do.

Anyways, the movie is very strange to watch alone. In one scene, a man drives out of some ice chamber on a motorcycle and starts singing how much he loves Rock and Roll. His name is Eddie. He has a leather jacket and a saxophone and in the movie he’s played by Meatloaf (the actor, not the food). Sam told me that Bob used to play Eddie when he was still in high school, which was surprising to me because Bob doesn’t seem like a person who plays anything.

I hope this is funny to you. I was hoping to cheer myself up by making jokes, but it’s not really working. I’m thinking about Eddie’s story and it’s making me very sad. They explain that when he was a kid he had a really hard time because he got in trouble a lot and always hurt his mom. When she died he left home and started doing lots of heroin, which I learned is much worse than LSD or pot because it ruins people. Eddie was doing what I called self-medicating, and I don’t really know if it’s okay anymore. I just feel like he was looking for something and never found it.

I say ‘was’ because at the end of the scene Eddie dies. Doctor Frank ‘N’ Furter chases after him with an ice pick as his girlfriend, Columbia, screams.

I’m sorry if that’s morbid. I’m trying very hard to tell myself that it’s just a movie. I feel like I’m doing the thing that Bill told me not to do, where I put too much of myself into other people. I just wish someone could have helped him. I wish he could have understood just how much Columbia loved him. But I don’t know if that would even make a difference.

This makes me think of Michael, and I’m ashamed to say I haven’t thought of him for what feels like a very long time. And it’s hard, because even if everyone thought about him every day, no amount of thinking could ever bring him back. Or make me understand why he did what he did. Maybe he was just broken like Eddie and didn’t want anyone to know. I’m not sure.

Anyways, writing all this out didn’t make me feel any closer to Patrick or Sam, but I think that’s okay. Because even though we aren’t talking right now, I have to believe that they still care about me. And that my parents care, too. And that even though it makes me uncomfortable, I should take my medicine at the dinner table and let my mom and dad watch because they’re here. And they’re trying. And I think that’s enough.

Love always,
Charlie

Methodological Commentary

For my formal imitation, I chose to focus on The Perks of Being a Wallflower, as I engaged with it more than any other novel in the course. The book is so popular and relatable as its themes are more applicable to our everyday lives. More than anything, Chbosky offers a message of hope – that while life is complicated and difficult, there are things and people worth living for. In my story, I wanted to reflect both this idea, and my own understanding of Charlie’s life and struggles. I ultimately decided that writing one of Charlie’s letters would be the best way to accomplish this, as it would mirror the book in both form and theme. I wanted readers to look at my story and question whether or not it was actually from the novel.
In order to achieve this, and have my writing accurately reflect Charlie’s own, I first went about examining the actual prose of the novel. I noticed that Charlie’s writing made heavy use of sentence fragments (many sentences began with “but”, “and”, “because’, etc.) as to mirror the way people speak in real life. Charlie’s writing also heavily relies on the use of “and” to continue sentences, as well as more obvious repetition, such as, “I think you of all people would understand that because I think you of all people are alive and appreciate what that means” (Chboksy 2). All of these techniques come together to make Charlie sound less like someone writing a formal letter, and more like a close friend talking naturally to the reader. I prepared myself to write in this fashion by selecting a few passages (mostly those close to the time my letter would be written, April 27^th) and typing them out over and over until I had a general sense of Charlie’s voice.
While an understanding of his actual writing style is essential, I also needed to come to an understanding of Charlie himself. I assembled a sort of “Charlie Checklist” based off my own understanding of his story and a closer examination of various passages throughout the novel. I wanted to identify exactly how Charlie thinks and reacts to certain events, so that when writing the story it would naturally evolve based on his thoughts and decisions. This was done to prevent myself from steering the plot in whatever direction I wanted it to go, irrespective of how Charlie would actually lead it.
I first found that Charlie - at least when describing upsetting events in his life - prefers to focus on simple external actions rather than discuss them in detail. When describing Michael’s death, for example, he simply notes how he was sad and confused and cried a lot. He avoids details as a way of distancing himself from them. It was for this reason that I did not include the dialogue or specifics of Charlie’s conversation with him mom, in which he feels he really hurt her. He simply says, “I don’t know why, but I got very upset. This made my dad very upset too, because I was hurting my mom... I didn’t mean to cry but that’s just something that seems to happen to me.” This idea of Charlie distancing himself from other people continues in his dad’s lecture. I wrote essentially what his father said, but I didn’t place his words in quotation marks to lessen both the strength of his voice and his presence within the story. Charlie is recounting his father’s words passively, from a distance, thus strengthening the feeling of loneliness within the reader.
I noted in my list that this distance extends to his presence in real life, as well. As Bill says, Charlie often uses thought to keep himself from participating in life. His thoughts throughout the novel are so detailed and complex that he essentially lives in them. For example, smoking pot is often a social act. However, in my story I show that Charlie smokes most often when he’s alone, and when doing so thinks deeply about both why he does it and self-medicating in general. As he easily forms connections between different ideas, this bridges into to a discussion about his prescription and his anxiety at being forced to take it, thus moving the story forward in accordance with how Charlie might realistically lead it. Furthermore, his focus on internal thought and the minute details of life lead him to do what readers might call “ramble.” I reflect this in my story through the aforementioned passages about drugs and medication, as well as Charlie’s jokes about Eddie/Meatloaf and his discussion of the Betamax player (reflecting the novel’s theme of nostalgia and Charlie’s sympathy for broken, forgotten things). While neither of the last two examples are essential to the plot, but they reflect Charlie’s character and lend greater detail to the world.
Another component of his focus on inner thought is his almost constant tendency to try to understand other people. This is demonstrated in my story most obviously through Charlie’s discussion of both Michael and Eddie. It seemed strange to me that the novel only talked about The Rocky Horror Picture Show in relation to the sense of belonging that Charlie derives from it, with him making few comments about the story itself. So I knew that I wanted to feature the actual movie in my story, and give Charlie the opportunity to reflect on it by himself. I downloaded the film and tried to watch it as Charlie would, making comments as I went. I ultimately focused on a discussion of Eddie because I feel as if Charlie would find him to be the most easily identifiable character. Consider the fact that, like Eddie, he also suffered due to his mistakes (kissing Sam instead of Mary Elizabeth at the party), hurt his mom as a result of this pain, and used substances as a way of coping with his loneliness. The sympathy Charlie feels for Eddie ultimately goes hand in hand with his struggle to understand Michael, as both suffered in silence and refused to let others help them. As you can see, the discussion of Eddie not only reflects Charlie’s inclination for empathy, but also ties up every single narrative thread within the story. It allows Charlie to realize that if he does not wish to suffer the pain they did, he must accept the help of those around him and try to move forward. This central idea is very much in accordance with Chbosky’s central theme of hope and understanding.

While I wrote my story to imitate Charlie’s thoughts, feelings, and writing style, it was extremely important for me to establish a context for it within Charlie’s world. I mean to say that the story is clearly dated (April 27^th, 1992), and thus occupies a place within the overall narrative of the novel. It had to respect Charlie’s feelings of loneliness after being shunned by his friends, while also respecting the other events happening in his life at that specific point in time. In the letter dated directly before my own (April 26^th) Charlie makes mention of the fact that he bought a large amount of pot from Bob with his Easter money. He also says, “I'd do anything to not have to see a psychiatrist… and to not have to take the medicine he gives me, which is too expensive for my dad” (139). As shown in previous paragraphs, I carry both these threads into my own entry and heavily expand on them. Furthermore, I not only expand on certain threads in Charlie’s life: I offer an origin point for them. In the second half of my story, Charlie watches Rocky Horror, which eventually leads to a discussion about Michael. In the following two entries written by Chbosky, we see a continuation of these ideas, as Charlie asks a classmate, Susan, if she still thinks about Michael. He also goes to see the live Rocky Horror show so that he might see his friends again, mirroring my line: “[I watched the show so that] I could be with everyone without actually bothering them.” I think that, by placing my story definitively within Chbosky’s narrative and respecting the events that come both before and after it, my story is made that much more believable and real.
In terms of challenges, I feel like my greatest difficulty was in deciding exactly how to end the story. I made the mistake of not establishing this definitively, hoping it would somehow come together as I wrote. For a long time I struggled with one possible ending in which Charlie reflects on helplessness – how he feels extremely vulnerable and passive in his own life due to the fact that his parents control his medication. I wanted to relate this to a discussion of Eddie by having Charlie consider that he’s helpless as well – that no matter how many times you watch the movie, nothing changes. Eddie always dies. However, no matter how many ways I typed this out, it never really came together. I actually had to step away from the assignment for a day, despite the fact that I had really wanted to finish it that night. On returning I realized that no matter how pretty I made the prose, nothing could change the fact that this ending was far too bleak. While it reflected some ideas discussed in previous paragraphs, it ignored the novel’s central message of hope. It didn’t teach a lesson or offer guidance, rather, it was simply a meditation on the depressing reality of life. I didn’t feel that was appropriate in terms of Charlie’s character, as he ultimately tries to see the good in life. The current ending more or less came to me with time. I feel it better respects both Chbosky’s core narrative and effectively incorporates everything I had discussed earlier on in the story. I made few other changes in my work as the critiques I received were largely positive and focused mainly on spelling mistakes.
Ultimately, I believe this assignment is extremely valuable as it was - at least for me - a way into empathy. I discussed this at length in my essay, but writing and reading about any text necessitates an engagement with it. To imitate Charlie’s letter, I had to immerse myself in all aspects of him. I had to study what he loves, how he writes, how he thinks, how he feels, and how he reacts. In doing so I came to actually empathize with him. It’s a word that often used interchangeably with sympathy, but I didn’t feel pity. Instead, I actually came to feel what he was feeling. Understanding others is a skill useful not just in our engagement with literature, but in life as a whole. While our personal experience would no doubt be made richer, I believe the world would be a much more kind and less violent place if people could simply learn to understand one another. At least a little bit.