Better Plot Summary (Perks)

Equilibrium—Charlie, the fifteen-year-old narrator of The Perks of Being a Wallflower, has just entered his freshman year of high school when the book begins. Charlie writes the entire book as a series of letters to an anonymous “friend.” The reader never learns who this “friend” is, and the “friend” never writes back. Each letter begins with the greeting “Dear friend” and ends “Love always, Charlie.” Because the recipient of the letters never writes back, the novel reads like a series of diary entries. When the movie starts, Charlie is grappling with two major traumatic deaths of loved ones in his past (including the recent suicide of his friend).

Disequilibrium—When Brad shows up at school with a black eye having been caught by his father having sex with Patrick,…