Argument Essay: Why “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” should be banned or not

           

It is pretty much common that parents want for the best for their children. Sometimes they might seem to be a little over protective, but it is for the benefit of their kids. With no surprise, some concerned parents expressed their opinions to ban from the school’s curriculum a book The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky. An interview with Dean Audet (father of four) from British Columbia portrays the book as absolutely not appropriate for middle school kids with 41 instances of sex obsessed contents such as molestation, rape, sexual contact between a boy and a dog, masturbation, physical abuse, and more. POBAW which was published in 1999, has also been filmed into a movie in 2012 with Emma Watson, mostly known from her role in the Harry Potter series. Some other people say that the book talks about problems so close and important for growing teenagers, who may not know that their problems are more common than they think. Shannon, “Story Snoop” blogger suggests that this book is much more than just a few graphic descriptions. She says that this book may actually help teenagers to navigate through difficult times of transition between middle and high school.

The main character of book “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” is a boy named Charlie. He is a freshman in a local Ohio high school. He is an introvert (like most kids these days) who often goes through periods of depression and anxiety. Last year his best friend committed suicide and this impacted him greatly. Some high school seniors found him in the school crowd and took him under their wings. This may seem good at first, but in book reality Charlie meets a lot of new people and witness scenes with cursing, sex, alcohol and drugs. His observations throughout the book are so interesting and honest that “Story Snoop: blogger says: “What makes this book a masterpiece (in my opinion!) is its accurate portrayal of adolescence through Charlie’s eyes.” (Story Snoop Blog - Best of Banned Books Week)  

            There is no discussion that some parts in this book are graphic and detailed scenes of sexual activities. The concerned father of four from BC says: "The amount of vulgarity and the amount of pornography was just overwhelming." (Huffington Post).  As self-described he has three minor daughters between ages six and twelve and a 10^th grader son. The concerned father listed 41 examples of pornographic detail. Some of his examples were: “molestation in graphic detail, a teenage boy having sex with a dog, and a boyfriend punching a girl in the face.” (Huffington Post)  In POBAW, sex isn’t the only thing that surprised the public. There are lots of instances of alcohol and drug use. For example, Charlie goes to his first party and accidently eats a weed brownie. The book goes into detail of what was going on through Charlie’s eyes and how he wanted a milkshake. Another example is that Charlie started to smoke cigarettes. “I’m now up to 10 cigarettes a day” (Perks of Being a Wallflower 103). That’s a lot for a day, plus teens can get the wrong idea and think that cigarettes aren’t that bad and not consider the health risks. These are just a few of allegations raised by those who want to ban this book from school’s curriculum or even from libraries.

            On the other side there are people that argue this opposition and say that this book not only should not be banned, but even make it more popular. Cited before Shannon from “Story Snoop” blog says: “Taking things out of context is a dangerous thing — you kind of miss the big picture. Pulling this book off the shelves eliminates the opportunity for young readers to learn from Charlie’s open-minded observations about other people’s struggles” (Story Snoop Blog - Best of Banned Books Week) She adds: “After all, don’t we want our teens to be reading books they can relate to?  Not only will they be more interested, they may also absorb valuable lessons that could help move their lives forward in a positive direction.” Her point of view comes from    a well and deep interpretation of the book. Concentrating on descriptions of bad behavior leads to poor judgment and jumping to negative conclusions too fast. The book presents those “sexual activities” not to entertain readers, but to present a weird reality of life of an American teenager.

            Should parents have rights to express their concerns about things their kids learn at school? Of course they should. Should they decide what’s good and bad for their kids? Maybe not all the time. The entire discussion started while this book was read and studied by 10 graders. Although there are a lot of new books becoming very popular among youths, most of them are about mysterious vampires (Twilight Saga) or wizarding schools (Harry Potter.) Not so much about real life problems of painfully growing teenagers. This book is not for kids from elementary school, but for people who want to better understand themselves or others.

STOP DEFORESTATION

Poem:

Trees cut by the chainsaw

We wish this isn’t the last straw

We cut the trees for wood

We sure know this ain’t good

From wood to paper

There won’t be any water vapor

Cutting up trees creates pollution in the air

We should have a say because this ain’t fair

All this creates smoke

At the end we’re all left to choke

Forests are like lungs, taking a breath

I just hope this doesn’t lead to our death

            Before I started writing the poem, I thought about topics that affected me personally in my life. My first idea was animal abuse, but I thought it would make me emotional while writing the poem. That’s when I remembered about deforestation. When I was in 3^rd grade, I wrote an entire essay about deforestation because I thought that this would affect animals and people. Trees are important to the world because without trees the carbon would not get transferred into oxygen. Trees also bring a beauty to city life and color to the gray and white houses. After the essay, I was so affected by deforestation that I wrote a letter to the president to do something and my brother and I donated some of our birthday money to the deforestation charity.

            I thought of words that rhyme like chainsaw and straw, or breath and death. I played around with the words until it all made sense to the topic. I then decided to outline it and talk about parts of deforestation and its future aftermath. I used a little slang to make it smoother to the New York tongue or way of speaking. In the end it sounded pretty good and I stayed with it.

Interview:

Interviewer: Filip Trzcinka

Person being interviewed: Daniel Trzcinka

Q: What is Deforestation?

A: it’s when you cut up tree’s in rainforests to make more room to build houses and farms

Q: From 1 to 10, how do you think deforestation will affect the world?                                             (1 being not that much and 10 being really severe)

A: 7

Q: Why?

A: Because it only affects wildlife

Q: Have you ever thought about deforestation?

A: Only when I had a class assignment, or charity ideas

Q: What would you do about deforestation?

A: try to raise awareness and stop it, if that does not work, save the animals and wildlife

(For this question, I showed Daniel the picture I drew)

Q: Do you think this ad will change people’s minds, or get their attention on deforestation?

A: Yes, when I saw the picture it definitely caught my attention pretty quickly.

Q: Why?

A: lungs are an important part of the body, and if they were destroyed, the body would get destroyed resulting in death, and death will catch lots of attention.

Q: Why is it difficult to stop deforestation?

A: Because people care more about themselves, and big companies destroy forests in their everlasting greed for money

           

My older brother Daniel helped me through a lot in life, especially to understand deforestation. He helped me with the essay, to write the letter, to donate with me. He inspired me to do deforestation as my project, and has helped me do my best in it.

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In the poem, I said that “forests are like lungs, taking a breath; I just hope this doesn’t lead to our death” so I drew a picture of a forest in the shape of lungs and a stream running into the forest. I erased some parts of the lungs to show deforestation and how it looks like it is destroying the lungs. Trees take in carbon and provide with oxygen. Destroying forests leads to no enough oxygen and death to animals and people. Trees and forests are like the lungs of the earth and if we destroy them, we kill the earth. That made me think that it was a great idea for a subtitle, but I thought that wasn’t enough. I remembered other ads using subtitles like SAVE THE PANDAS or HELP DESTROY CANCER, that made me realize that it was the missing component and that’s when I knew I was done.