Commentary On The Book Speak By Laurie Halse Anderson

“The world suffers a lot. Not because of the violence of bad people, but because of the silence of good people”. Most teens feel socially unaccepted and emotionally unaccepted to speak up depending on what situation they have gone through. In this essay the main focus will be on the book Speak. But there is also gonna be information on the play's Other schools of thoughts and Skin & Liars. Speak is about a teenage girl, Melinda, who gets raped at a party, and calls the cop. Melinda never told anyone why she calls the cops. So everyone in school starts hating on her, including her best friend, Rachel, this make her feel like an outcast.Majority of high school students has to face great difficulty to express their feelings or their opinion publicly.

This happens when teens feel unaccepted in high school or sometime a situation (rape) she/he had been through before/during high school. In the book Speak, one of the statement states “I have entered school with the wrong hair, the wrong clothes, and the wrong attitude and I don’t have anyone to sit with” (Anderson 4). Having a good appearance is “important” in high school, if you want to feel accepted or wanted.. In the book Skin & Liars it states,”what about when people call you name on the streets?...What about when people stare to you?”.This statement prove that high schoolers care about their appearance so they can impress other High Schoolers and become popular. Another point in this statement is if you don’t have a positive attitude, then no one would want to be “friends” with you. High school students check on how you act with other people to see if you are good enough to be friends with them. Another point, is that Freshman students hang out with their elementary school friends in the beginning of the school year to show everyone that they should be friends with her/him too or to show them he/she is popular