Friendless

Friendless

Wonder

By R. J. Palacio

Imagine being the new kid at school and no one is friendly, and instead is constantly staring at you and whispering about you. This is what August Pullman experiences daily when he enters the fifth grade at Beecher Prep Elementary school. August has a birth defect that causes his face to droop, which looks alarmingly different from the other kids. Being homeschooled his entire life, his parents think it would benefit him to go to a public school-despite his anxiety that he will quickly gain a negative reputation for his appearance. Mr. Tushman, the school principal, asks Charlotte, Jack, and Julian, some kids who are already students there, to help ease August’s transition from being home-school and show him around prior to the first day of school. Jack and Charlotte are welcoming, but Julian makes insensitive comments about August’s face. When school officially starts, all the other kids stare at August and whisper about him when he walks down the hallway. He has a lot of difficulty making friends because everyone thinks he’s weird and is to go near him, let alone talk to him. He becomes friends with Jack because they have a lot of classes together, and with a girl named Summer as she’s the only person who will sit with him at lunch. When he feels like he’s finally made a few friends, he overhears Jack telling some of the other kids he is only friends with August because Mr. Tushman asked him to and he pities him, which makes August so furious at Jack that he won’t talk to Jack for a period of time.    

I very much enjoyed reading this book because it teaches a lesson about peer pressure, which is something extremely important for our generation as many of us are moving on to college next year. The author shows that giving in to peer pressure, or feeling like you have to agree with someone just to get their approval is never a good thing. Julian is the one who began the making fun of August’s face on Halloween, and Jack adds “‘If I looked like him [August], seriously, I think I’d kill myself’” (Palacio, 77). When August confronts him about this later in the book, Jack admits he didn’t really mean it; he only said it because he felt pressured by Julian. Wonder shows the reader that peer pressure can make people do things that are uncharacterized to them. The point the author’s getting at here is that you shouldn’t do or say things because of peer pressure. You might regret it later, and it could have a negative impact on your life, as shown by August’s anger for Jack refusal to talk to him for a long time because of what he said. This lesson is relevant for our generation as we are reaching adulthood and graduating from high school this year. Transitioning from high school to college, it’s important for us to remember to not let our peers pressure us into doing things we aren’t comfortable with, which we can apply to things more serious than what happened in Wonder, such as peer pressure to drink or do drugs.

Throughout the book, the perspective of the story changes from the different characters, from August to Jack to Olivia for example. I found this to make the book more interesting because it gives the reader different interpretations of the events happening in the story. In the section told by Olivia “Via”, we see how Olivia feels about August’s situation, and how it affects her. She feels as though she’s living in August’s shadow because her parents have invested all their time in August over the years and more or less ignored her. She loses her best friend and needs someone to talk to about it, but can’t bring herself to talk to her mom because she knows August’s back to school troubles are far more serious than what seems like silly high school drama. One day while August is at school, Olivia stays home with her mom because she misses her grandmother very much, who had died a few years prior. Olivia finally gets the courage to talk to her mom about what’s troubling her without August around to steal the spotlight, when the school nurse calls and says August is sick and needs to be picked up right away. Her mom “assumed the ‘August’s mom’ role again. ‘Via’s mom who had come out for a little while was put away” (110). Olivia’s mom quickly brushes her aside and rushes to help August, which makes Olivia feel unimportant and overlooked. By including these different perspectives, we see how August’s appearance not only impacts him, but how it impacts his family, and other characters in the book.

Wonder touches upon the idea that we shouldn’t discriminate others for their appearance, because, regardless of if it’s intended or not, can make people feel left out. Most of the kids at school won’t talk to August; many won’t even go near him because of his face, and “Students would move out of the way quickly, like they were afraid I [August] might accidentally touch them as I passed by him” (25). He feels lonely, discriminated against, and unwelcome at his new school, becoming depressed and doing everything he can think of to make friends, but nothing seems to work. This proves the point that we should be inclusive of everybody regardless of what they look like, because the way the other kids treat August is unfair and makes him feel very bad about himself. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in any of the topics previously mentioned. The issues August faces are relevant in our lives today, and the author effectively conveys these issues in a tasteful way by providing evidence as to why they are important and need to be addressed. Wonder contains many sad moments but many happy moments as well, and I would recommend it to anyone who would appreciate August’s journey of struggling and eventual success with the challenges he faces at school.