“I'm writing to you because he said you listen and understand and you didn't try to sleep with that person at that party even though you could have. Please don't try to figure out who I am. I don't want you to do that. I just need to know that people like you exist” (Chbosky). Grief can be both rational and irrational, by design or choice, and being able to be held within yourself is something of an art form that many teenagers have masterfully accomplished. Everyone's high school years hold some painful memories during that time period. It's inevitable, because in some adolescence pains you hit rock bottom, and you hit hard. The Perks of Being a Wallflower exemplifies the power of pain and joy in high school, where suffering is evoked by mistakes and tragedies throughout the character's life, as well as the ideological implications of being a teenager that make you feel truly invisible to the world, yet observed so closely, all at once. Within films there is always a bias towards what the director of each film offers us as an implicit inference towards what exactly he or she thinks is right and wrong, or ideologically sound or immoral. Characters and cultures are given perspectives on which ideological views of societies correspond to each situation they are aware of. The Perks of Being a Wallflower is similar to a John Hughes film of this generation, in that it gives teenagers a voice to their pain, which is so relatable and frighteningly common in the lives of young adults. This voice is never truly acknowledged, and what little voice they are given is filtered through another adult, whether it be school rules, the news, or even literature. Charlie, Patrick and Sam are the tortured characters of the film, who are affairs...... middle of paper ......king or less important than the adolescent one; nor are the age groups belonging to each indicated respectively. Just as the characters speed through the tunnels of their small town with music blaring through the open windows, adolescence is just like driving in a tunnel: bright, shocking lights with no way out except the other side. And if you emerge on that other side, you will always be older, though not always wiser, or a better person. These life moments are easily forgotten and drowned out by the other pertinent stresses at the other end of the tunnel. And looking at life in a bigger picture is, in a way, essential to feeling gratitude. Good and bad things happen to all kinds of people, from every clique to every country. It's just a matter of recognizing the fact that we are alive and essential to this crazy story unfolding around us.