book review

Book Review

The epistolary novel “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” was written by Stephen Chbosky in the 1990s. The book consists of a series of letters, which are written to a friend by the personal-narrator, a 15 years old teenager named Charlie. The story takes place in Pittsburgh. The book gives you an insight of a teenager’s life. It’s about introversion, abuse, teenage sexuality, the difficulties of adolescence and experiences with alcohol, cigarettes and drugs.

Charlie has no friends, both most important persons of him died. His sister has a boyfriend and his brother is on a college. Bill, his teacher, gets important to him, because Bill always gives him good new books to read, but Charlie’s still alone. At a football match he gets new friends and so everything changes. He starts to go to parties, drink alcohol, smoke cigarettes and take drugs. He falls in love with his friend Sam, but she doesn’t want to have a relationship with him. Charlie is very different from the others, he observes lots of things, many people entrust him secrets, he gives special presents, he is very sensitive and he cries a lot. At the end of the novel he has totally changed.

The book is very simple to read and in my opinion it’s really funny, how Charlie describes everything what he observes. The author made me feel like I’m in this fictional world and if Charlie had written these letters to me. I really liked the novel, because it’s something different from the other books and it makes fun to read it.

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description: charlie

Description: Charlie

The book is about Charlie, who is a 15 year old boy and writes letters to a stranger. He is a very sensitive and lonely person at the beginning, because his two most important attachment persons died. His best friend Michael committed suicide and his aunt Helen died a few months ago. Charlie is a person, that everybody would call wallflower. He reads a lot, loves music, is withdrawn and he cries a lot. He sees the world through the eyes of a child. His family is very important to him. He loves his parents, his brother and his sister, although there are some conflicts to deal with. Bill, Charlie’s teacher, gets important by and by to Charlie, because Bill gives him lots of books to read and writing exercises to do. Bill teaches him and Charlie’s spelling style gets better. At a football game he finds new friends, Sam and Patrick. Sam is very beautiful and he falls in love with her soon, but she doesn’t want to have a relationship with him, she only wants to be friends. With his new friends he starts to drink alcohol, do drugs and go on parties, because he thinks, he has to do that to be cool and accepted by the others. He is afraid of losing his friends or being alone and he cries a lot, but all in all he is happier than he was before. You can follow his psychological changing process during reading the book. At the end he becomes another person.

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character map charlie

Character Map Charlie

How does he look like?

like a 15 year old teenager (at the end: like a 16 year old teenager)
no information about his aspect

How does he act?

Charlie is very sensitive and he cries a lot (e.g. about his sister, after the fight with a bully etc.)
In my opinion he acts like a nominal member, because he does drugs, drinks alcohol etc. to be cool. He tries to be popular and hopes that everybody likes him.
I’d say he hasn’t much self-confidence.
He is also nice, makes special presents and his friends entrust him secrets.

How do other people react to him?

I think most people don’t think about him, because he’s a quiet and introverted person, a wallflower. Later in the book they might think he’s a strange person or a freak, because he’s weird.
He quarrels a lot with his sister at the beginning, but after some time he is the only person who she can trust.
His friend Sam is his unreachable dream girl. Charlie gets his first kiss from her.
Sam and Patrick are his friends and they changed his life, they took him to parties and showed him how to act with girls.
His parents don’t want to see his psychological and drug problems. He and his mother have a good friendship. His father is very strict, but he never beats his kids, because he’d been beaten in his childhood.

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exam correction

exam correction

Nowadays there’s a lot of violence in the whole world and in the media. In this text I’ll try to explain why there’s so much violence and I’ll make proposals how the violence among children can be reduced. Finally, I want to talk about my opinion about this topic.

I start with some theories about the causes of the increasing violence in the world. The first theory is that violence is an instinct which everybody has. That means it’s natural to have aggressions and we have to find a way to get a grip of our aggressions. The second theory says that violence is the result of an on-going learning process. In other words it is possible to make a aggressive or a moderate person out of every person. The last theory is that aggressiveness and consequently violence is the result of frustration. Every person gets frustrated sometimes, so we have to deduce our aggressiveness by doing sports or something else. For me all of these theories are plausible, so I do not really know the real reason for the violence in the world. I’d say that all of these theories are true and partly explain the cause for the increasing violence.

Now I’m going to tell you my proposals for reducing violence among children. In my opinion the most important point is the education. Parents should be a good role model for their kids and they should tell them that violence never can be a good solution. I think it’s also important that parents don’t let their kids watch violent movies of play violent video games, it’d be better if the children can go into nature and play. Another important point is the environment and the school. Every school should have a contact person for children to help them solving their problems without using violence.

I admit that Medved has a good point when he claims that violent films don’t mirror the reality of the average viewer. Like him I doubt that violent movies – especially if watched frequently – don’t have a mark on us. However, we live in a free country and we cannot forbid everything that may or may not be dangerous for some. Of course, non-violent films make lots of money too, but this is not an argument against violence in films. Finally, in contrast to him I think that it’s possible to escape this violence and reading about such films in magazines is quite different to watch them.

Finally I have to say that these different theories and opinions won’t ever disappear. So I think people will discuss this topic still in hundreds of years.

pro/con essay

Essay about a ban on violence in movies


Nowadays there is a huge range of violent movies and that brings up the question „Should we impose a ban on violence in movies or not? “ Now I show you some good arguments pro and contra that ban.

Many people think that the film directors produce violent movies to make a lot of money, because folks want to watch violent films. But non-violent movies are successful, too, and some of them bring in much more money than other violent films do. Another argument pro the ban is that there are people who imitate their harrowing film-idols. Some of them turn into a copycat killer for example and that’s something incredible horrible.

In contrast, there are many points which could convince you from the contrary. The violence which is shown is mostly so unrealistic that a normal person doesn’t copy it. Many a person argues with the point that our society won’t get more non-violently by watching violent films, but we don’t turn into a non-violent society just because we don’t show violence. What I find most important is that you should regard that the majority of people doesn’t get violent or becomes insane and copies cruel leading parts of such films.

In my opinion the ban should not be imposed, because the arguments pro the ban are a bit ridiculous. A ban on violence in movies is against the human rights, too and I think everybody has the right to watch what he or she likes.

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„Snow falling on cedars“, by David Guterson

Task 1

The book is placed in 1954 on the island San Piedro, in a fishing village with many cedars. It is about the Japanese American Kabuo Miyamoto, who is charged for murder. The trial is the most important aspect in this story.
Kabuo is accused for killing Carl Heine. a fisherman who gets found being caught in his salmon net. Carl has a severe head injury, a cut in the hand, and the coroner finds out that he has died of drowning. His boat has been found with its lights on and a D-6 battery in it, the same as Kabuo needs for his boat, although Carl’s boat needs D-8 batteries. The night is very foggy, and everybody knows that Kabuo is the last man who has seen Carl at the harbour.
Kabuo has wanted to buy Carl’s mother’s strawberry farm, but because of 2 missing payments she has sold it to someone else. A few years later, Carl has bought the land back, but Kabuo still wants the land.
Kabuo’s wife, Hatsue, says that when Kabuo returned from fishing in the morning of the 16th of September, he was very excited, because Carl had admitted to sell the land to him.
Kabuo also says that he was fishing in this night, and then he recognized Carl who needed help, because his batteries were dead. Kabuo gave him one of his D-6. Then he returned to his boat to continue fishing. Hardly anyone believes this story, because he is Japanese, and does not seem to be faithful.
The twist of the people’s meaning comes when Ishmael takes new facts to court. He finds out that in that night a big ship came through these fishing areas which caused a huge wave which could throw anybody off a fishing boat. Carl might have climbed up the mast to save his lamp when he suddenly saw the ship passing by, then he might have not seen that a huge wave came and so he hit his head on the wooden side of the boat. Then he might have fallen into the salmon net and drowned.
Kabuo’s lawyer tells the jurors not to look at Kabuo with preconception, because he looks like an enemy soldier, but see him as an American man. After this he gets discharged.

Correction of the 1st written exam

Task 1: Describing a picture in a letter

Dear Teddy,
I want to tell you about a particular picture by Norman Rockwell. The picture depicts five people on a sidewalk and in front of an empty wall there is a little black girl in a shining white dress with school stuff in her left hand. She walks on a sidewalk and at the wall in the background you can see that someone sprayed the word “Nigga” onto it and smashed a tomato against the wall. On the left and on the right side there are two white Deputy US Marshalls with a yellow arm band round the upper arm, but their heads are not shown. These men all wear grey suits. I think it’s ironic that the white men wear black shoes and the black girl wears white ones. At the bottom you can see the signature of the artist Norman Rockwell. The picture seems monochrome, because the painter used a lot of grey shades and in my opinion it looks like a photo. I think Norman Rockwell wanted the painting to look as realistic as possible. The picture has a dreary effect on me and it seems a little bit hopeless to me, too. I can’t imagine if the painter wanted to express something with this picture. I don’t really like it because there is nothing exciting or beautiful in this picture. http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.spell.gif
Yours, Maria

Task 2: Is it art?

In my opinion this photo isn’t art at all. I think there’s nothing special about this picture. It’s just a photo, which depicts legs of an unknown woman, a shovel and a green garden in the background. I believe that art is in the eye of the beholder, so maybe this photo can be art for some people. I think art is a possibility to see things differently, so everything can be art. A flower can be art, too, apart from not knowing who designed it. Many people don’t see nature as a kind of art, because there’s no designer. If someone wanted to pay only to see an ordinary picture, he should do so, but I think it’s stupid. I think that an artist should have skill to make good art or something shocking or critical.