In the novel, Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, the chapter prey shows that the main character, Melinda, learns from her mistake and stands up against her worst nightmare, Andy Evans. After algebra class, Melinda goes to her closet and grabs her Maya Angelou poster. After Melinda is finished grabbing her things from her closet, Andy Evans pushes Melinda back into her closet, “somebody slams into my chest back into the closet. The lights flicks and the door closes. I am trapped with Andy Evans” (193). Melinda is scared for her life because of Andy and states him as “made out of slabs of stone” and “enormous” (193). The first time that Andy and Melinda were together, Melinda was drunk and Andy raped her and she did not fight back. During the time Melinda said a small “no” but Andy covered her mouth and kept doing what he was doing. …show more content…
In the closet Andy tries to rape Melinda again, “His mouth is on my face. I twist my head. His lips are wet, his teeth knock against my cheekbone” (194). Andy thinks Melinda is an easy target because the first time this occurred she did not fight back. Therefore, Melinda will not stand up for herself if this instance takes place again. Andy is a very strong man and he keeps grabbing her and slamming her body. But Melinda can only make a “whimper” (194) sound. In this moment, Melinda remembers what happened the first time and comes to a realization of needing to fight back and stand up for herself. As Andy keeps touching Melinda, she screams out “NNNOOO!!!” (194) for Andy to stop. Melinda tries her hardest to to push off and fight
There are many themes that are presented in the book Speak, such as to not be afraid to speak up about the truth. In the book, Melinda is a freshman in high school that is now an outcast after she called the cops on an end-of-summer party last summer. But there is more to the story. Last summer at the party, a guy named Andy Evans raped her. But no one knows the truth except Melinda.
Everybody in the school is angry at Melinda, taunting her, for calling the cops at a party thrown over the summer. She stands in silence, not even her ex-best friends Ivy and Rachel will talk to her. Little does anyone know, Melinda was raped at that party by Andy Evans, a popular senior at her school because she was too drunk to
Melinda’s grades begin to drop and she starts to self harm by biting her lips until they bleed. When Heather notices that Melinda is depressed, she breaks her friendship with her instead of getting Melinda help. Her parents and guidance counselors notice her sudden decline, but think it’s just a ploy for attention. Months later, Melinda finally admits to herself that she was raped by Andy Evans. She starts going to class and reuniting with her friends.
She also told Heather “… That’s not what I mean, I mean no, won’t help you. ”(Anderson 179). This was one of the first times that she stood up for what she wanted. After her fight with Heather, Melinda had a confidence boost and felt strong and powerful. Towards the middle of the novel she was getting more positive feedback from her friend Ivy.
Because Melinda called the police after the rape, the party got stopped, and Melinda became an outcast from there on out. Melinda struggles with making new friends at school because she is a part of the group of outcasts within the school. Throughout the book, the reader is shown
Because of this, she has a difficult time speaking out about the event that happened to her. The struggle that Melinda goes through and what she feels is similar to that of countless women who have been in the news lately. Recently, more women have come out and talked about their experiences with sexual
This causes her to be unable to speak as normal and express herself only through self physical acts of hurting herself. However, through her pain, she begins to grow from a victim to a survivor and understands that the only way to go against evil is to speak out against it. Melinda in Speak is a high school freshman who is raped by Andy Evans who is a senior in high school. Due to him raping her she loses her ability to speak normally and say what she feels and how she feels. Melinda gains her confidence to speak in public freely again by the end of the story.
In the book Speak , melinda is a social outcast due to what happened in the summer. She tends to stay quiet and not speak when confronted. She hasn't been able to speak or be confident due to what happened at the summer party. She doesn’t like herself as much and throughout the book she keeps saying an alien is in her body and she wants to create distance. Melinda was raped by a senior named Andy and towards the end of the book she has the confidence to finally speak out and confront everybody.
At the end of the story she finally found her voice and was able to stand up for herself. In the beginning, Melinda didn't talk to anyone, barely even to her parents. She says, “I have tried so hard to forget every second of that stupid party and here I am in the middle of a hostile crowd that hates me for what I had to do. I can't tell them what really happened” (Anderson, 28).
After Melinda admits to herself that she was raped, Melinda starts to realize that
Melinda begins the school year, separated as an outsider, by the mystery of assault, and by the way that her attacker goes to her school. A portion of her disengagement is deliberate; she purposefully pulls back from individuals. As said Melinda said in the story, ¨I figure I'll answer if [David] calls. In any case, on the off chance that he touches me I'll detonate, so a date is
" Ah-Ah-Ah, you just chose your destiny, you can't change that” (. Melinda is stuck with the tree, which symbolizes not being able to change her past. Melinda might not be able
Andy was on the other side of the spectrum. Andy attended a party with Melinda and her friends and asked her to come to his car. There, he raped her, leaving both mental and physical scars on Melinda that will last a lifetime. At the dawn of the next school year, Melinda tried to rekindle her relationship with her friends that Andy forced her to lose,he walked towards her table and said; "Fresh meat” (150). Melinda immediately got up from the table and left, obviously distraught.
She feels ashamed and blames herself for not being a good enough wife for Tom, just as Melinda feels guilty as though the rape was her fault, even if it really wasn’t. It is later revealed that in reality, it was actually Tom who had done all those atrocious things. He would lie to Rachel, blaming her for all the things he had done, just to make her feel guilty, weak, and worthless. Just how Andy had made Melinda feel after he raped her. With this connection, I can better understand Melinda’s character through Rachel’s in The Girl on the Train, which I read and enjoyed before I read
Speak You Also is an autobiography written by Paul Steinberg. He tells his story about how he went from freedom to being arrested in Paris, taken to Drancy, and then transported to Auschwitz. Throughout the book Steinberg explains how he was able to survive and advance to the next day. Going through moments, and rationalizing what he was thinking, and what he was doing.