Summary of the book The Perks of Being Invisible, is a literary work that is based on events that involve adolescents, who during their youth are attacked by different events in their lives.
Summary of the book The Perks of Being Invisible
The literary work The Perks of Being Invisible was written by Stephen Chbosky, an American playwright, screenwriter and director; the interesting novel was published on February 1, 1999; The advantages of being invisible, is a novel that belongs to the genre of youth literature, has been developed by the author based on issues that include adolescence, the subject of withdrawn people, sexuality, drug use and mental health, which affect many young people as they are going through the stage of adolescence.
Charlie, a boy only fifteen years old, is the narrator of The Perks of Being Invisible; being the age where adolescents enter to begin their secondary studies, and of course it is the case of Charlie.
Charlie is the "invisible" character in such a play The Advantages of Being Invisible. He is a boy whose characteristics include a quiet, withdrawn person, however, at the same time he is considerably observant and educated, he is always attentive to any circumstance that occurs in the environment that surrounds him, he even becomes a secretive witness, Charlie, renders the entire book as a repetition of letters to an unknown friend.
This work has the particularity that the reader does not get to reveal who the anonymous friend is, in addition the friend never answers the letters. Especially each of the letters begins with the greeting "Dear friend" and ends "with love always, your Charlie". It is known that the recipient to whom the letters are addressed never answers, the work reads like a diary.
Young Charlie, in his being, is dealing with the event of two significant deaths that affect him emotionally, two people very dear to him. Being one of them, the death of his only friend, an event that occurred in the spring season that has just passed, when he committed suicide, and on the other hand the death of his aunt when he was seven years old, who died in a car accident on Christmas Eve, Charlie's birthday.
Charlie, aside from being anxious and distraught about entering high school, suddenly finds himself accepting of two important things. He is first represented by his English teacher, Bill Anderson, who notices Charlie's literary intelligence and protects him, giving him extra books to start reading to them, as well as essays to write. throughout the year.
Likewise, Charlie begins to integrate into different activities and events, and manages to make great friends with Patrick and his stepsister Sam, who introduce him to their group of friends. Meanwhile, Charlie falls madly in love with Sam, but she only treats him with great affection. Patrick, in his gay condition, has an affective relationship with Brad, he is the field leader of the soccer team.
Young Sam decides to give Charlie a kiss, seeking to mark that her first kiss is given to a person who loves her. As the school year goes by, she begins to let go of her shyness, however, the life of Charlie, her family and her friends becomes more complicated with each passing day. The theme of vacations always becomes something difficult for Charlie's family, because they remember the tragic death of his aunt.
Charlie begins to have difficulty bearing his discouragement and remembering dates that marked his life with his aunt Helen. But, the fact of being admitted by his group of friends, gives him a lot of well-being and peace of mind for his spirit.
As time progresses, Charlie matures, his behavior with his sister consolidates in a good way. The sister has an arbitrary boyfriend. Charlie tells Bill about the events, about what her sister spends with her boyfriend, and she gets mad at Charlie. However, when Charlie's sister becomes pregnant, she decides to have an abortion, and entrusts Charlie to take her to the clinic.
Later, in one of Charlie's performances as Rocky, in one of his friend's usual performances in the movie The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Mary Elizabeth is excited to go out with him. But, Mary Elizabeth is not really motivated to maintain a relationship, she is only concerned and interested in herself.
In an event related to games and competitions, Charlie decides to kiss the most beautiful girl in the room and that's when he plants a kiss on Sam. This fact makes Mary Elizabeth leave the place very upset.
The vast majority of the group sympathetically aligns itself on Mary Elizabeth's side, to which Patrick tells Charlie to stay away until they calm down. Meanwhile, Brad's father's abuser realizes Patrick and Brad's relationship, so he sends his son Brad to a halfway house. Once Brad returns he objects to contacting Patrick.
One fine day, Patrick confronts Brad in a coffee shop in the city, while making a contemptuous remark about Patrick's homosexuality, while Brad's team friends physically assault him. Charlie immediately intervenes to end the contest; acting to defend Patrick, regains respect for Charlie on the part of Sam and all of his friends. Patrick, feeling heartbroken, turns to Charlie for emotional support.
Patrick drinks too much and begins to kiss Charlie, but at the same time he asks him to excuse him, Charlie understands that Patrick is very lonely and doesn't know how to handle his emotions. Patrick sees that Brad is kissing an unknown man, but continues on his way.
As the days go by, Patrick is very anxious, because apparently all his friends will leave, it is obvious. Once Sam gets ready to go to her pre-university studies for the summer season, she and Charlie start kissing and having sex, but suddenly Charlie feels unwell.
The sexual contact reminds him in his mind of repressed moments that he lived with his aunt Helen, who abused him only when he was a child. Charlie, after two months, writes one last letter to his "friend of his" in which he informs her that his parents had found him without clothes lying on the sofa with his mind totally paralyzed.
His parents immediately transferred him to a psychiatric center, and it is when they really discover that Aunt Helen sexually abused him when he was just a child, Charlie, without much thought, forgives his aunt's actions. The story culminates with a young man who writes letters, and says he longs for a new start in life, that's Charlie.
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Argument
The literary work The advantages of being invisible, is a story that does not escape the reality that many adolescents live, its main character Charlie, wrote many letters to an unknown friend, while the content of the book is narrated from the perspective of this character. , as well as the creation of other characters, and other different elements that surround the story from the memories he keeps of his childhood.
In Summary of the book The advantages of being invisible, the story is told with a non-traditional style of thinking of the protagonist, as he drifts between adolescence and being an adult, and tries to deal with disturbing questions from his family and friends.
Characters: Summary of the book The Perks of Being Invisible
In this interesting novel The advantages of being invisible, several characters participate, however, the main character is Charlie, he is a student who will start high school, he has a calm, solitary, quiet character, with a brilliant mind, very observant who It's time to deal with the memories of your childhood.
Charlie, manages to emerge from where he is through the interrelationships he makes throughout the school year, however, it is until the end of the work that he can elucidate the repressed memories due to the sexual abuse he was subjected to when he was a defenseless creature, and that remain in force in their minds, they produce traumas that do not depart from their thoughts and that disturbed their adolescence.
Charlie, also tells of her sister, a high school senior, is highly intelligent, however, she is in an abusive relationship: when she becomes pregnant, she begs Charlie to take her to an abortion clinic. Charlie has fond memories of her aunt Helen, he blames her for her death, but at the end of the play she learns how she abused him.
Patrick, is another character, he's a high school senior, he's Sam's stepbrother, and one of Charlie's best buddies. Patrick, has a hidden relationship with Brad, the field manager of the soccer team; Patrick accepts Charlie because he is a person with special characteristics, in addition to making him feel good and he thinks that he can be himself.
Sam, is Patrick's stepsister, a high school senior and one of Charlie's best friends, Charlie has fallen head over heels for her. Sam was a sexually abused child, so she bonds very well with Charlie, even though neither of them know about their connection until the end of the novel.
another character is Craig, he is Sam's boyfriend, he is a male employer who poses as a university student, he has all the opposite characteristics of Charlie; he is beefy, unfaithful and not at all intelligent.
Bill Anderson, is Charlie's English teacher and mentor, is the adult image that represents more stability and confidence in Charlie's existence, and helps him to develop more confidence in his own personality.
mary elizabeth, is a young and intelligent girl, seductive and individualistic, belongs to the group of Charlie's friends, who extends an invitation to the main character to the Sadie Hawkins dance, and they leave, however, she only cares about talking about herself , and not in having a relationship.
Brad, is the field manager of the football team and a homosexual kept in the closet. Brad and Patrick maintain a hidden love relationship, until Brad's father finds out. Instead of confronting his father, Brad continues to inhibit his sexuality, insulting Patrick with comments about his homosexuality in front of everyone at school.
Bob, is a friend of Patrick, is the one who supplies marijuana to all high school students. Bob attends college and personifies what could happen to Charlie's schoolmates, if some of them become completely dependent on drugs.
In The Perks of Being Invisible Book Summary, Charlie's brother also appears in the story, he is a brilliant high school football player, currently playing for Penn State.
Charlie's mother is an attentive and loving lady with Charlie, but, with a fragile emotional state due to the death of her sister, she attends to Charlie, she is still not recovered from the past. Charlie's father, a friendly man to Charlie, but he is racked with emotional guilt that he left his mother and sister in the care of an abusive man, for which he has not forgiven himself.
Aunt Helen, who died when Charlie was seven years old, and was the one who sexually abused the main character. In Summary of the book The advantages of being invisible, also appears the maternal grandfather Charlie, who was always making racist and homophobic comments.
michael dobson, Charlie's high school friend who took his own life, appears a few times in the story. Although Charlie, not wanting to take his own life, tries to take Michael as his model of what he will not do, he begins to understand how Michael could get to the point of becoming depressed.
SusanShe was Michael's girlfriend when he killed himself. Charlie, Michael, and Susan were very good friends, but after Michael's death, Susan walked out of Charlie's life.. peter, Mary Elizabeth's boyfriend, after she ends the relationship with Charlie, she starts dating him, he is a college boy boxing partner of Mary Elizabeth.
The Advantages of Being Invisible Poem
In Summary of the book The advantages of being invisible, the author refers to some parts of his work as poems, where he takes a sheet of yellow paper with green lines, capturing a poem that he titles "chops", alluding to the name of his pet, the dog, and that is what his teacher refers to, the one who gave him a letter A accompanied by a gold star, and his mother proudly hung it on the kitchen door, so that his aunts could read it.
During that year, Father Tracy took all the children to the zoo and allowed them to sing on the bus, and his little sister came into the world with very minimal fingernails and no hair at all. Her mother and her father kissed endlessly, and a young woman on the corner sent them a postcard from Valentine signed XXX, and asked her father what the Xs meant.
His father, when night came, took him to bed, which he did constantly; On a blank sheet of paper with blue strokes, he wrote a poem that he titled “Autumn”, at the time and that is what he was referring to, his teacher gave him a letter A, and asked him to write the poem more clearly, and his mother never hung it on the kitchen door.
It was then that he found his sister kissing in a back doorway, his mother and father never kissed, and the girl in the corner was wearing too much makeup which made him clear his throat when he kissed her, but he didn't care anyway. did; at 3 in the morning she got into the bed of her father who was snoring heavily.
So on the back of a brown paper bag she wrote another poem, "Definitely nothing," because she really had cut each of her wrists, and hung it on the bathroom door, thinking this time he wouldn't make it to the kitchen door.