Speak Summary In “Speak” by Laurie Halse Anderson, Melinda is starting high school and has not many friends. She feels like she doesn’t fit in at Merryweather High School. She just lost her best friend and made a new friend as well. The author wants Melinda to speak about her problems with her teachers, her parents, or anyone who is willing to help her.
Before her traumatic event, Melinda was indepent, now, after the event, she is even more so. Both of Melinda’s parents work full time jobs and are away from home most of the time. Their only communication most days is through notes left on their kitchen counter. Melinda doesn’t typically rely on her parents for much.
Throughout the book Melinda has problems with her family. For example, they don 't communicate with her and instead choose to just communicate by writing notes to one another. Also, her parents are disappointed with her grades. They also are constantly arguing with each other.
In the book, it seems that almost nobody reaches out to Melinda or notices that she is usually alone and is depressed. The way Melinda acts should be enough proof for some teachers to notice the fact that she has depression. Not even her parents show the least amount of concern. While the book does not pay much attention to the other characters like Rachel, Heather, or Ivy, it is still a recommended book for incoming freshman.
The characters Melinda, Rachel, and her peers all develop the theme that people can learn to grow and change. In the book Speak Melinda develops the theme that people can learn to grow and change because at the beginning of the book she isolates herself by hiding in the janitor's closet, doesn't talk to anyone, and has no friends at school so far. She also blames herself
In the book Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, Melinda gives a really good example of character development throughout the story. Melinda just starts her freshman year at high school. Over the summer her and her friends went to a party and Melinda gets raped by a boy named Andy Evans and ends up calling the police, she didn't tell anyone why she called the police, causing her friends and everyone at the party to reject her. Melinda’s only friend is a new girl named heather. Melinda gets depressed and starts expressing her pain through stuff like biting her lips and her nails, and not talking.
She lost her identity and became cynical of other people. After her old friends ditched her, she lost a major part of herself. Then, although she did not consider Heather a “true friend”, she was desperate to keep her when Heather wanted to cut the ties of friendship. Going through high school is hard enough, but especially difficult when teenagers have no one there to go through it with. Also, Melinda’s appearance changes drastically over the summer.
One night, one party, one person, one call, that is all it takes to change somebody’s identity and shape them into the person they truly are. Melinda Sordino is the victim of a horrible night that changed her life. In the novel speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson, the main character Melinda is faced with many challenges. Melinda attended a party the summer before ninth grade. She wasn’t thinking about the consequences that come with drinking, she was not thinking about how one little action could ruin her relationship with those around her,one action that could shape her identity into who she truly is, one action that she would be to traumatized to tell anyone about.
Through the novel Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, Melinda the main character (protagonist) takes us through her first year of high school, the ninth grade. In the summer before ninth grade Melinda had a traumatic experience happened to her that night at a party full of senior. In the beginning mets her first teacher who takes advantage of his power as a teacher. She get in art class were they are assigned to a school round project. All different objects, Melinda gets a tree.
Consequently, Melinda’s character is one which most teens relate to. Friendship is very important aspect of high school. In high school friendships start to change and so do people. People feel like they have to be cool and popular in high school and that's when everything starts to change for Melinda.
Throughout the novel Speak, Melinda’s mouth becomes a symbol. As she works her way through her trauma, she develops a compulsion to bite her lips when faced with a difficult or stressful situation. It’s not uncommon for victims of her sort to take on some form of self destructive habit like this— generally, for either the conscious or unconscious purpose of punishing oneself for whatever event took place. It’s a guilt mechanism. This is, however, only one half of the symbol.
Have you ever been changed by life. Melinda a small town girl in the book “Speak” she loses her friends and were she live make it very hard to tell people what is currently happening to her and what happened to her. Her environment with no one to help her, and her friend leaving her when she need them the most. First, Melinde environment, she live in an area where no one will listen to her and, no one will talk to her.
In Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak, The book follows a ninth grade student named Melinda Sordino through her first year of high school. She has trouble in school because during the summer she calls the cops on a party that she is attending. Now all her friends won't talk to her and the whole hates her for what she has done. This affects Melinda in a negative was and forces herself to stay quiet and to herself for the whole year. Readers feel that Melinda should stay her quiet self through the situations she was handed during the novel but, Melinda should speak on the situations that are present to her because they would have turned out better for her than her not talking about them.
The novel Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson, is about a girl named Melinda, who shows signs of depression throughout the story. She has no friends and is hated by people she doesn’t even know. This is because she called the cops at a party, where she was raped. Anderson includes literary elements to show how Melinda is depressed. Throughout the novel, she uses many different literary elements to show Melinda’s conflict.
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.
