Literary perspective

Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower was published in 1999 and is part of the realist movement. Realist works of literature use everyday speech and references to real times and places to create an authentic story. 

In The Perks of Being a Wallflower, the narrator, Charlie, uses teenage vocabulary to describe his emotions and his experiences of high school. The story also refers to real locations, such as the Fort Pitt Tunnel in Pittsburgh, and has an unusually precise time setting – each letter Charlie writes is headed with a date, for example: “August 25, 1991” (p. 3).

Realist novels often present characters living in ordinary circumstances and undergoing common experiences. In The Perks of Being a Wallflower, for example, the cha...