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Art Class In Mr. Freeman's Speak

616 Words3 Pages

Do you think school took out creativity from it and wants the students to be some kind of ‘robots’? This is Mr.Freeman would probably say to the class. This story called “Speak” revoulves around a fifth teen year old girl that was raped but no one knows. She has a art class and the teachers’ name is Mr.Freeman. He says this on the first day of school,”Welcome to the only class that will teach you how to survive. . . . Welcome to Art.”. Art class helps Melinda survive because through her teachers motivation and her tree project she is finally able to express herself with what happened to her. The only reason she isn’t skipping art class because art is her only way of communicating, and Melinda is reflected in the trees she draws. Melinda …show more content…

She is withdrawn and doesn’t get along with her old friends anymore. She spends most of her time in the janitors closet. The only class she seems to enjoy is art class. On the first day of art is when all the students had to pick a piece of paper in broken globe. That decided what they had to draw for the rest of the school year. Melinda gets a tree, but thinks its too easy and wanted another one. Freeman stops because he says its destiny that gave her the theme of a tree. Anyways the more ways she tries to draw the tree the more she can’t. Melinda is hiding a dark secret. She won't talk to anyone about it, and the more the feelings overwhelm her, the more she draws trees. Trees represent life and death. They are a constant source of renewal. The symbol of the tree is the symbol of Melinda, herself. When Melinda realizes she needs to talk to someone about what happened, she shortly realizes that she is slowly dying in on the inside. Once she comes in terms with rape, she could fully control herself. “Those branches were long dead from disease. All plants are like that. By cutting the damage, you make it possible for the tree to grow again. Melinda knows that the disease is her trauma from the rape, and needs to destroy it so she could finally let go of what happened to her in the

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67). This is the starting point where Melinda starts to come out of her shell. This is really clever from the author considering that every tree starts from a seed, so for the author to use this as a breaking point for Melinda, is very intelligent. She even gets extra credit for showing her teacher that she found a special apple

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For example, the art piece she made with turkey bones, a Barbie doll head, culinary utensils, and tape had evinced her emotional distress. Mr. Freeman had seen these sensibilities within Melinda's artwork as well by saying that "[it] has meaning. Pain" (65). Melinda has an idea in her head of what she wants her tree to look like, which also symbolizes herself, "a strong old oak tree with a wide scarred trunk and thousands of leaves reaching to the sun" (78). Melinda can create this tree only if she becomes like this tree as a person by surrendering into acceptance of the atrocious offense committed against her and the scars that came with it.

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