Thursday, November 13, 2014
In The Perks of being a Wallflower, the main character Charlie struggles with PSTD, anxiety, and depression all from horrid past experiences. These past experiences include being molested, abused, and his best friend taking his own life. These disorders have had strong affects on his self worth, social skills, and high school experience all together. Charlie continued to struggle with these disorders throughout the whole book, and in essence his high school career unknowingly. He knows he is sad, and has "episodes" but doesn't truly understand why yet. "Have you ever done that? You feel really bad, and then it goes away, and you don't know why." (103) Charlie struggles with this continuously, and his two friends Sam and Patrick have played a huge positive role in this whole situation.
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In "Girl With Curious Hair" (the story), the main character has some disturbing flashbacks. He and his sister found some inappropriate magazines, and emulated what they had seen. When his father finds out, he doles out punishment, which involves burning- don't ask where. Needless to say, the child is scarred literally and figuratively. He has an obsession with burning things such as cats.
ReplyDeleteIn "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" by Jonathan Foer, the main character Oskar struggles with many of the things you mentioned. His father died in the attacks on 9/11, and his life has been lost ever since. Oskar is only 9 years old, so he doesn't really understand death or even have the slightest idea of how to deal with the loss of his father. To deal with it, he has developed an odd and eccentric personality. He found a key labeled "Black" in his father's. To try and find what the key unlocks, he visits every person with the last name Black in New York. He struggles with social skills, asking weird questions and talking too much. I wouldn't be surprised if he has some or all of the disorders that you mentioned.
ReplyDeleteIn one of the stories in "Want Not" by Jonathan Miles, one of the woman also had a traumatic experience in her past. Her husband died in 9/11 and, to add to her grief, in the days after he died, she read some of his emails to another woman and found out that he had cheated on her. Not only did these emails contain some very explicit content, but they also had them proclaiming how much they loved each other and how he never truly loved his wife. To compensate for all of this tragedy, she acted like he never existed and was able to push him away from her mind. However, she came across one of his old boxes in storage and all the emotions came rushing back to her. She seemed very bothered by it all and, though I have not gotten far enough yet, I would like to see how this effects her throughout the book.
ReplyDeleteIn Empire Falls, the main character is a middle-aged guy going through his midlife crisis. He has been working at the same diner in the same run-down small blue-collar town for 20 years and his wife just left him. Obviously, he hasn't had a traumatic experience or disorder per se, like these other characters. But he has a feeling of regret about the way his life has ended up, since he went to college for the exact purpose of getting away from his hometown and was going to do just that until family circumstances arose. The main character has flashbacks to his younger days as a boy, when he had his full life ahead of him, and he, along with some other characters, constantly think about what could have been. At the same time though, he seems a little bit content with his life and remains a very positive person, as if being a middle aged lower-middle class guy in a blue-collar town that has seen better days really isn't so bad after all.
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