Throughout the novel Speak, Melinda’s mouth becomes a symbol. As she works her way through her trauma, she develops a compulsion to bite her lips when faced with a difficult or stressful situation. It’s not uncommon for victims of her sort to take on some form of self destructive habit like this— generally, for either the conscious or unconscious purpose of punishing oneself for whatever event took place. It’s a guilt mechanism. This is, however, only one half of the symbol. Melinda also stops talking entirely when she’s at the lowest point in her recovery. This is a recognized syndrome, known as selective mutism. To her, the amount of effort required to string her thoughts into coherent words for somebody else to hear outweighs the value