Melinda's Character In Speak By Laurie Halse Anderson
Speak was written in 1999 by Laurie Halse Anderson. The book is about Melinda, a freshman just starting high school. Melinda starts school off with no friends, she lost the ones she had over the summer. A traumatic event causes Melinda to shut everyone out, and not speak to anyone. Growing up usually takes time, but Melinda is rushed into maturity too soon and must help others do the same.
In Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, the plot revolves around a party during the summer where the main character Melinda Sordino was sexually assaulted by Andy Evans. After this party, she goes silent, becomes very depressed, and tries to cope by herself. This book follows her through her journey in her freshman year and how she learns to speak out about the party. This book also exemplifies sexual assault and how it can deeply impact your mental health. This is shown throughout the whole book, but on page 132, David Petrakis asks Melinda if she wants to go to a party with him.
Speak, the story of Melinda Sordino, the girl without a voice. In speak the main protagonist, Melinda, has to go through high school with almost everyone in her school hating her because of a misunderstanding, she called the police on a summer party because she was sexually assaulted but never had the courage to say anything. Throughout the book the writer, Laurie Anderson uses trees to symbolize changes in Melinda’s life like (insert thing here), how Melinda needs to remove the “dead branches” from her life so she can move on and grow from her experiences, and how Melinda was finally able to “cut the dead branches” from her life and learn to speak up for herself. A good example of Melinda’s transformation is shown in this next quote. “He’s
She knows how her life is going wrong. And she has started to try and make it better, by skipping school, having a fake friend, and ignoring what happened to her. When her tree project is brought up in history class Melinda says “I try to draw a branch coming out of a tree trunk for the 315th time. It looks so flat, a cheap, cruddy drawing. I have no idea how to make it come alive”
According to a graph in the” RAINN” article, 15% of sexual assaults occur in an open public place. In the book “Speak” Melinda got raped during a friend's party at the end of summer. I read the book “Speak” and articles RAINN, PTSD, Lady Gaga, and The Perfect Victim. They all explain how the victim was affected, how the victim copes with being raped, and the relationships the victim had with people after they were raped. The first similarity i see is how the victim was affected after being raped.
One will eventually come across the day where they are able to figure out who they truly are as a person. A discovery like this will lead to new chapters of life and start new beginnings. Although finding one 's identity can be difficult to understand and accept, it is crucial in life to discover oneself. In the novel Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, a teenage girl, who had to overcome and deal with an awful tragedy, takes readers on the long journey she walked before finding meaning and value in who she is as a person.
Melinda’s identity is shaped by school and friends. Melinda’s identity is shaped by school, but more importantly her school experiences. An example of this would be a quote from Principal Principal that says, “Those are your friends?” (Anderson 116).
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 starts off talking about what she looks like and how she acts, then eventually the girl starts to accept herself. It takes the girl a while to get to the point of acceptance, there is many obstacles she has to get through. First there is her fake funeral, then her grandmother, and father died. “My grandmother died, then my father.” (Norton 227).
Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson was a surprisingly explosive novel, and was not something that I was expecting. The novel initially begins with the introduction of a young girl named Melinda, roughly aged thirteen or fourteen, as she had just began high school as a freshman. However we get this introduction of her character not by dialogue as most books do, but simply by Melinda's thoughts and narration. In fact, throughout the novel, rarely does Melinda speak aloud, which I felt added a great ironic effect to the title. Why does she not like to speak?
Melinda feels that because of what she did she is treated poorly which leads to her having depression. “... I don't have anyone to sit with. I am an outcast. There is no point in looking for my ex friends.” (4) Melinda is right.
Avy was new at a school she had no friends and she didn't know anybody. She was new in town because she had came all the way from portugal. She had to work hard to speak english because she only knew how to speak portuguese. Days had past and she had very few friends because she was quiet and she didn't speak much.
While reading the story, you can tell in the narrators’ tone that she feels rejected and excluded. She is not happy and I’m sure, just like her family, she wonders “why her?” She is rejected and never accepted for who she really is. She is different. She’s not like anyone else
By gaining new allies and friends, finding a passion in art, and being able to express herself and confide in people, she becomes stronger. With this, the tone develops and changes while it slowly adapts when Melinda again talks about her closet saying, “I hang out in my refurbished closet. It is shaping up nicely… Maya Angelou’s picture watches me while I sweep and mop the floor, while I scrub the shelves, while I chase the spiders out of the corners. I do a little bit of work everyday…
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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