Wallflowers and Catchers

The book The Perks of Being a Wallflower revolves around the main character Charlie and his freshman year in high school. As this book progresses, I see an amassing amount of connections between it and The Catcher in the Rye. Once of the first incidents mentioned in the book is about charlie’s best friend before high school, and how he had committed suicide shortly before the time of the story. I can relate that to The Catcher in the Rye because Holden had lost his brother to cancer. In both of these cases it severely affects their lives in a negative way. A second connection that could be made between the two books is how lonely the two main characters are. Holden has no friends to speak of because of how he chooses to live his life. Whereas Charlie was in a way forced into loneliness because of his friends suicide. But something that separates Charlie from Holden is that shortly after the novel begins, Charlie makes friends with two other classmates, and really creates the backbone of the story. Whereas in The Catcher in the Rye Holden doesn’t make friends throughout the entire novel and has trouble connecting with other people, aside from those he deemed not phony. Such as his sister.