Artificial One Of Speak By Laurie Hales Anderson

There is a hidden message behind every book. Especial one called Speak written by Laurie hales Anderson it involves a girl named Melinda Sordino. Sordino is a freshman at Merryweather high school. She has been an outcast ever since a senior party in summer where she got raped by a senior named Andy Evans. After the incident, she called the cops who shut down the party, which leads to many people hating her including her own friends. The people that outcast her had no clue that she called the cops because she got raped, Melinda never spoke to anyone about it. Eventually, she confessed about what actually happened that night at the party. This story deals with a lot of important themes that many have a hard time admitting to which includes communication

People struggle due to the lack of communication—including people like Melinda Sordino. Evidence can be found in a chapter called “Spotlight” it mentions, “It is easier not to say anything. Shut your trap, button your lips. All that crap you heard on TV about communication and expressing feeling is a lie. Nobody really wants to hear what you have to say.” Here you notice when she is starting to isolate herself and not express what she truly feels to anyone. This later continues in chapter “Closet space” where it states “I want to confess everything, hand over the guilt and mistake and anger to someone else…Even if I dump the memory, it will stay with me, staining me. My closet is a good thing, a quiet place that helps me hold these inside my head where no one can hear them.” Melinda’s is having trouble talking, or communicating with others, lately. She insists that she really wants to tell her secret, but to “hand over the guilt and mistake and anger to someone else” won’t help her get rid of the horrible memory. Instead, she kept her tragic experience to herself and hid in the closet. What propelled Melinda’s confession was when she refused to help heather with prom. That led to her overcoming her fear and confess to Rachelle about what really happened the night of the party. As previously seen the reader can say that Melinda put in practice the quote, “Bad human communication leaves us less room to grow.” Just like

In the beginning of the story, the reader starts noticing the signs of Melinda’s depression. In chapter “Home.Work.” It mentions “I watch myself in the mirror across the room. Ugh…Could I put my face in my tree, like a dryad from Greek mythology? Two muddy-circle eyes under black-dash eyebrows, piggy-nose nostrils, and a chewed-up horror of a mouth. Definitely not a dryad face. I can’t stop biting my lips. It looks like my mouth belongs to someone else, someone I don’t even know.” Sordino expresses that she isn’t pleased with her appearance when she looks at herself in the mirror, which results in her imagining herself making lifeless versions of trees for art class. After she imagines herself as a tree she hides the mirror. Which represents the lack of her being able to face her feelings. By the end of the book, Melinda is gradually letting go of her depression when she finally learns how to speak about the terrible thing that happened to her. She begins to find a way past her depression, by learning to accept her dreadful past and move