Meet the Cast
Charlie
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Our little wallflower Charlie spends a lot of time analyzing, well, everything. He's always in his head, trying to think through some of life's grea...
Sam
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Charlie is attracted to Sam from the moment he meets her. And he's not hesitant to wax poetic about the matter, either: "Sam has brown hair and very v...
Patrick
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Patrick is one of Charlie's best friends. Well, he's one of Charlie's only friends. We only get to see Patrick through what Charlie decides to share i...
Mary Elizabeth
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Mary Elizabeth is quite a pill, if you ask us. With a tattoo and belly button ring, she's a teenage American Buddhist, and she has a lot to say about...
Bill
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Bill is Charlie's super-cool ninth-grade English teacher. Can you say literary crush? Early on, Bill recognizes Charlie's intelligence and writing tal...
Aunt Helen
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Charlie's aunt Helen was his "favorite person in the whole world" (1.1.26). In fact, she is his only relative that gets a name. That's saying somethin...
Charlie's Family
On the surface, Charlie's family meets the textbook standard criteria for normal: mother, father, three kids. We wouldn't be surprised if they had a white picket fence. But just because they fit a...
Bob
We don't know too much about Patrick's pot-dealing friend, except that he throws a lot of parties and smokes a lot of marijuana—probably in his parents' basement.What about Bob?Everything we lear...
Michael Dobson
As the novel opens, Charlie is still reeling from his best (and probably only) friend Michael's suicide. We never really get to know Charlie and Michael as a duo—all we know is that they went to...
Brad
Brad is the hunky quarterback who's been conducting illicit sexual escapes with Patrick on the eighteenth green of the golf course. Brad's ashamed of being gay and is trying to hide it from everyon...
Craig
Craig is Sam's "cut and hunky" (2.2.11) boyfriend. He's in college, an artist, a male model (for JCPenney, but still), and he buys alcoholic beverages for his underage friends. Swoon, right? Well,...
Susan
We have to begin by stating the obvious: Susan is a teenage girl whose boyfriend committed suicide. Nothing is easy after that.Susan is yet another female in this novel suffering from low self-este...