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Character Analysis Of Melinda In Speak By Laurie Halse Anderson

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High school, it’s a necessary part of life, yet no one wants to be in it. This is the case and more for freshman Melinda. Melinda is the protagonist in the book Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson. She is going through a very rough time that she is having trouble dealing with on her own. Before her freshman year of high school she was raped at a party, no one knew that this happened. She called the cops, and the party got busted. Everyone at school hates her because of this, not knowing the real cause of her calling the police. She is so depressed from keeping everything bottled up that at any moment it seemed she was going to crack, but she was able to pull through,. In this novel the author portrays how no matter how bad things get, things do get better. She does this by …show more content…

The other kids at school are absolutely cruel to her. She has no friends. The only girl that is her “friend” is friends with her because she is new and has no friends yet. She hardly talks anymore, she has nearly become mute. People will call her names because she got them in trouble at the party. This is clearly stated in the book when she writes about an incident that occurred in Spanish class: “I get hosed in Spanish. “Linda means “pretty”in Spanish. This is a great joke. Mrs. Spanish Teacher calls my name. Some stand-up comic cracks, “No, Melinda no es linda.’”(Anderson 41) This shows how horrible the kids treat her at school. She is treated like this just because of one party in which no one really knew what happened. Towards the beginning of the novel a girl antagonizes poor Melinda say to her, ‘“My brother got arrested at that party. He got fired because of the arrest. I can’t believe you did that, Asshole.”’(Anderson 28) The people of her school are so judgmental of her, when in fact they know nothing about what has gone on. There are many lessons that can be learned from this

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Then starting high school people change and everyone ends up hating certain people for something they cannot control. Plus, they lose all friends they have in the mix of things. In the book Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, the main character Melinda Sordino gets raped the summer before high school at a party. She was extremely drunk and called the cops after the incident happened.

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Many people experience depression, and don’t know how to show it, but Melinda finds a way around that problem by showing it in her drawings of trees in art class. In the novel Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson, Melinda Sordino is pushed into arguably the worst year of her entire existence. After an obscured anguish over the summer, Melinda enters ninth grade being quiet and somber. Struggling with school, family, and friends, melinda explains the tragic story of her experiences, and the reason why she has decided not to speak. Although Melinda does show some evident outer signs, such as cutting her wrist with a paperclip, much of Melinda's depression is shown through her artwork of trees.

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It deals with bullying in a form I rarely see. This form is her sister bullying her more often than not. Miriam is a very unique girl that is very confident but when someone says something about her or her face, she gets insecure. So far her actions aren’t very surprising besides when her sister says things. I would think that she would yell back at her or say something mean back .

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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.

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In “Speak” by Laurie Halse Anderson, Melinda is a freshman that attends Merryweather high school. She’s trying to survive high school, but her teachers, ex-friends, and parents are making that almost impossible. But something that Melinda did at a party makes everyone hate her, and the author wants Melinda to speak. Throughout the book, Melinda has problems with her family.

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She is so deprived of communication that she can not hold a relationship with a friend for more than a couple months. It has gotten to the point to where she is skipping classes and school, when the school finds out everyone talks to her, her parents, guidance counselor, and prisiabel. They talk about how you need to stop and

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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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Communication is important for every teenager. Teenagers should communicate for their betterment. The novel Speak, by Halse Anderson is about a young girl who struggles to communicate facing numerous problems throughout high school. Through Melinda’s silence, the fear of speaking, and the authors use of symbolism, the author suggests that when teenagers don’t communicate their issues to loved ones, they lack the support that is needed to overcome their troubles.

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The novel follows Stevie an eleven year old girl who lives in Southside Chicago throughout her middle and high school years. Stevie goes through the social pressure of her peers and family to tell her how to act, think, and look. Slowly throughout

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Laurie Anderson’s novel, Speak, is about a teenaged girl named Melinda, who is in school and has to overcome her fear to speak about a terrible secret. The convincing setting and the compelling theme makes it easy for students to relate to the story; it takes place in a typical high school and the author reveals the hardships of being young and also being depressed. The characters are very stereotypical people in terms of school as there is the lonely girl, the popular girl, the nice girl, and then the bully, or in this case, the rapist. All three of these contribute to Melindas sorrow or happiness. As noted above, the various characters in the novel reflect typical teen personalities; school figures.

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The main character, Melinda, is excluded from all clans in school because she called the police the end-of-summer party. No one knows why she did it. She is an outcast; she accepts it. She perfectly knows what peers think about her. She describes them, with criticism and some regret in her voice.

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Speak Have you ever gone through a trauma? “ Recovery doesn't erase the trauma as if it had never happened, it just makes it easier to deal with” ( American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stress). The novel Speak is about a teenage girl going through her tough high school years. She started the school year with no friends and with a heavy secret weighing over her. One might think that her problems are just teenage normal ones, but what they don't know is that she was suffering from a sexual assault, rape.

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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.

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The constant bullying from her classmates majorly Franky, makes her struggle with her identity. In the story, the girl does not tell her teacher’s about the bullying and sexual harassment. The reason for not reporting is because the teachers will not believe her. They will only tell her that it Frankie had a crush on her. She also would not tell her father because it

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he novel Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson, focuses on the story of a high school freshman, Melinda Sordino, who is struggling to overcome a sexual assault that happened during a party over the summer. Melinda then called the cops, subsequently shutting down the party. Her actions result in her friends abandoning her and the rest of the school viewing her negatively, as no one else knows the real reason as to why she called the police. Due to the trauma she experienced, she stops speaking and becomes maladjusted and deeply depressed. She has no one to talk to about what happened at the party, causing her to lose all motivation for her classes, except for art.

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