Family Relationships In Speak By Laurie Halse Anderson

Rough draft:

As a child and adolescent growing up your family is your backbone. They are the people that help you grow and help you handle issues, they are also the people that stick by your side through thick and thin. Family relationships are a very important part of a person’s emotional, social, and physical growth; however, through the tragedy of Melinda rape her family is absent and clueless.Which leads to Melinda being sad and depressed because she does not know where to turn for help. In the book Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, Melinda’s family was absent and reluctant to the fact that she was becoming a recluse. Melinda’s parents are workers and come home at late hours of the night and head straight to bed. They never notice their daughter struggling which meant no one reached out to her, allowing her PTSD to go unnoticed and without help. Melinda kept to herself and did not share her feelings because she grew up watching her parents keep to themselves and not seek out help, children tend to do what they have watched their parents do.

Melinda faced the trauma of being raped by herself for way to long and it is shown by the way she took care of herself and the way she never talked. If her family had noticed or invested more time into getting to know her they would have noticed their daughter falling into a deep dark hole that is depression. She says many times in the book “i am outcast” which tells the readers that she knows that she is not handling things well, she is this way because she was not close to anybody so chose to be