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Brief Summary Of Speak By Laurie Halse Anderson

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Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson is a story of a girl that wants to make it through her first year of high school safely. The main character, Melinda, is trying to cope with what happened to her last year at a party. She was sextualy assulted by a guy that is now at the same school as her. The police were called by her and then she lost all her friends because of it. This story is how she tried to make it through her first year without too much pain. In the beginning of the book Melinda is able to make one friend, and that happened to be a new girl named Heather. As a first attempt to make a friend Heather spots Melinda alone and decides to try and befriend her. Although with the passing of time Heather finds a new crowd to hang out with. Melinda starts to feel excluded, and one day during lunch Heather tries to break ties with her. This seems hard for them both, but it was something that felt like it needed to be done. …show more content…

She started to hang out with the foreign exchange students and decided she wanted to be called Rachell. Rachel, wait no, Rachell starts dating the guy that had assaulted Melinda at the party, Andy Evans. One day in the library Rachell and Melinda had a bit of a conversation, although it ended up on paper since the librarian didn’t want there to be any noise. They did end up discussing the party and Melinda told Rachell what happened, although when she writes that it was Andy Rachell get mad and claims that Melinda is a

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There are specific people who helped her mature in a certain way. She slowly opens up over the course of the year with support from different people. There are several people in this novel who help Melinda find her “voice”. Mr. Freeman, for example, was an important part of Melinda’s growth. He is Melinda’s art teacher who came off as weird at first

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1659 Words | 7 Pages

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson is a book about a girl named Melinda Sordino. In the beginning of this book the audience meets Melinda as she is the main character and she describes her first day of high school starting with an assembly. Throughout the book you read about her life but she goes back to the past recalling of something that happened at the end of the summer; in a couple of instances she comes across someone that she refers to as “IT”. When reading you don't know who this “IT” is but it is developed over the story by her having flashbacks to that night or dropping a hint of what happened. During a seminar at the beginning of the book Melinda meets someone named Heather who is new and becomes her friend but ultimately leaves her

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754 Words | 4 Pages

Also, the closet her “safe place” she always used to hide what happened at the party from everyone else becomes a dangerous place. “It”, also known as Andy Evans the boy who rapes her at the party breaks into the closet and tries to sexually assault her again. Melinda realizes she can't let this happen again and therefore fights back with everything she has. She realizes that her closet is not safe anymore and that she can't hide from her trauma. And that she can't hide from this problem, and she needs to stand up and speak to the problem.

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1787 Words | 8 Pages

She also starts to make weird excuses, like feeding the warthogs. In another scene, Heather introduces Melinda to some of her friends. One of the girls Heather introduces her to is appalled. As Melinda tries to hide from the people’s stares, one girl wants her attention. “Aren’t you the one who called the cops at Kyle Rodgers’s party at the end of the summer?”

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570 Words | 3 Pages

Melinda didn’t speak to anyone before she kind of remembers what had happened to her in the summer. This book is great. You can imagine what goes on in the book. For example “I plunge my hand into the bottom of the globe and fish out my paper.

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755 Words | 4 Pages

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).

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924 Words | 4 Pages

Desperate for friends, Melinda meets Heather. Heather craves popularity that Melinda can far from provide. Heather, like so many other abandons Melinda. Rachel her ex best friend became someone totally different, she even started dating Andy Evans. The boy who raped Melinda.

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682 Words | 3 Pages

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.”

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453 Words | 2 Pages

She get's harassed by a Popular group called the Marthas, they make fun of Melinda when she is introduced to them. They comment about her hair, body, and lips in a negative way. Also Rachele Melinda ex-friend hangs out with popular people and

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983 Words | 4 Pages

Although the students she calls “Future Fascists of America” are not revealed, they in reality are just the student government minding their own business. Melinda and her negativity feel the need to insult them, but she does not reveal why she does so. The reader can see these thoughts Melinda has in her head and start to feel extreme dislike towards her as a character. Her attitude and actions that the reader does get to see, do not make her a favorable character and readers start to hate her from the beginning. Once the orientation is over, Melinda is dreading being there even more, and remarks that on the way to her first class, “I can’t find it and get my first demerit for wandering the

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873 Words | 4 Pages

It is never good to be judge a book by its cover. This is also applies to people. We cannot judge someone or know everything about a person just by looking at them. We do not know what they have been through, their struggles and life experiences. The novel, Speak written by Laurie H. Anderson, is about a girl name Melinda Sordino, who is a rape victim and a freshman in highschool.

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1218 Words | 5 Pages

Another element in this novel is Melinda’s inner conflict, man vs. self. What Melinda has been through greatly affected her everyday life. She struggles with depression, dislikes her appearance, and feels ashamed of herself for something that isn 't her fault: “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” (Anderson 51). Andy Evans, the senior who raped her, made her feel worthless. This situation is much like the one in the novel The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins.

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909 Words | 4 Pages

The novel, Speak, is about a girl named Melinda, who had an unfortunate incident befall her the summer leading into high school. Now, everyone dislikes her and Melinda spends the majority of the year hiding in the shadows trying to find a way to speak. Melinda befriends Heather, a new girl from Ohio. For a sizeable part of the book, Melinda and Heather linger with each other and therefore, the contrast between the two characters is unquestionably prominent. Heather has a bubbly, determined, and egocentric personality.

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1197 Words | 5 Pages

Melinda, in a lot of ways, starts out like that it the book. She becomes a shell of herself from before the party happened and because no one else was there, she is lonely and doesn't have anybody to go to and to make matters even worse, she’s covered by the reputation that she has formed. In the book, Laurie Halse Anderson uses symbolism to convey exactly what Melinda can't say. In the beginning of the book, Melinda starts high school carrying her emotional wounds with her after something happens mysterious to her at a party during the summer.

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432 Words | 2 Pages

Melinda is a dynamic character as she meets the sole requirement— going through substantial character change. At the beginning of the book, Melinda was a social outcast. She had no friends, nothing to look forward to everyday, and fear of interacting with her former friends and classmates. As the story progressed, Melinda changed gradually. She found solace in art class and drawing trees.

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