Catcher In The Rye And The Perks Of Being A Wallflower Analysis

As illustrated in the Catcher in the Rye and the Perks of being a Wallflower, teenagers are generally different from how they appear to be. The protagonists of both of the books – two teenagers named Holden and Charlie – struggle with their inner dark memories. Holden’s classmate commit suicide and his brother dies because of leukemia. Charlie’s best friend commit suicide and his brother dies because of leukemia as well. Holden and Charlie’s traumas can compared with their trauma’s difficulty and harshness because they have difficult and uncomparable childhood traumas. However, one must realize that not only their traumas are different, but their ways of dealing with their traumas are different as well. Type of sharing their feelings and how much support they receive affect the outcome for each character , which also affect their recovery process.

As Holden and Charlie both try to cope with their emotions, they think about their traumas in different ways. Charlie chooses not to occupy himself with his trauma, so he subconsciously represses all the disturbing memories as much as he can. Even though he sometimes visits his aunt’s grave and prepares her a mix-tape. Charlie tells Sam something about Michael, he still represses how Aunt Helen molested him and immediately distracts himself when he thinks about her and Michael too much. His mind is “trying not to think about it too much because that makes it worse.” (79) Instead, Charlie mostly fills his mind with school, friends,