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Melinda Sordino's Transformation In Speak By Laurie Halse Anderson

1204 Words5 Pages

High school can be a scary place for many newcomers, upperclassmen with facial hair, people start driving, getting ready for the ultimate goal of college, some would call high school a awkward puberty acne faced hell. For melinda the first year of highschool was a whole new level of hell, not many can compare their experiences to her own. The novel speak goes hand in hand with the theme of transformation. Melinda Sordino, fourteen-year-old high school freshman, is drastically transformed when she's raped by popular senior Andy Evans or “IT” as melinda calls him. Melinda loses all her friends at a party just before she starts high school due to a grave misunderstanding. She becomes silent, secretive and distrustful of people. terrified of being alone with a boy. Her friends or ex friends ignore her. He only friend Speak follows Melinda through her freshman year. she struggles to change back into the girl she used to be, fighting surviving as a social outcast , but more importantly trying to win the war going on inside her head while becoming someone newer and stronger. Her positive transformations come about through, learning, listening, speaking and most importantly art. We watch as Melinda's transforms …show more content…

I feel the frozen stillness melt down through the inside of me, dripping shards of ice that vanish in a puddle of sunlight on the stained floor. Words float up. Me: “let me tell you about it.” “ pg 198 she used detail painting an image in her mind as she finished transforming, like a butterfly out of their cocoon, she spread her wings and flew. She conquered her fear to speak she grew as a person and became so much more, a role model to others who are too afraid to speak up, she grew out of her shell transforming into a new stronger

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It is estimated that 1 in 6 women will be a victim of attempted or completed rape, however, only 16-40% of all rape is reported. In the realistic-fiction novel, Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson, 14-year-old Melinda becomes a victim of rape at a summer party and begins to hide from herself to avoid the past. Within the novel Anderson uses the mirror as a motif to show Melinda’s growth from hiding from herself to defending herself. After Melinda’s assault, she calls the police while watching herself in the reflection of a window. “I saw my face in the window over the kitchen sink and no words came out of my mouth” (Anderson 136).

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