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.
Her word choice is often informal or conversational, which makes the reader feel as if they are being told a story by a friend. For example, she says, “My father, incidentally, had wanted to name me Sara. I do wish he had won that argument” (739). She uses casual words and short sentences to make the passage simple and easy to understand. She also is blunt and to the point, without the descriptive or page filling details that are not necessary to her memoir.
Speak Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Selective Mutism “I know my head isn’t screwed on straight. I want to leave, confess everything, hand over the guilt and mistake and anger to someone else. There is a beast in my gut, I can hear it scraping away at the inside of my ribs. Even if I dump the memory, it will stay with me, staining me” (Anderson 51).
Kayley Flores English pre ap- 1st period Part 1- précis Speak by Laurie Anderson is a young adult fiction book that takes place freshman year at school in New York. The novel is circled around Melinda Sordino, the protagonist, and Andy Evans, the antagonist. The conflict happens because Melinda called the cops at a summer party. She struggles to make friends and speak up about what really happened that night during the school year. Summer is getting closer, so Melinda decides to get her stuff out of the janitor’s closet where then she is confronted by Andy.
Many of the names were chosen from the bible on the day of a child’s birth. Letting God choose a child’s name shows a level of faith in the parents which often results in awkward and weird names. The use of the name, Magdalena called Lena, is similar to the phrasing in the bible in names like Simon called Peter. Toni Morrison put a lot of emphasis into the characters' names in Song of Solomon. The main characters' last name of Dead has a lot of emphasis.
This causes her to be unable to speak as normal and express herself only through self physical acts of hurting herself. However, through her pain, she begins to grow from a victim to a survivor and understands that the only way to go against evil is to speak out against it. Melinda in Speak is a high school freshman who is raped by Andy Evans who is a senior in high school. Due to him raping her she loses her ability to speak normally and say what she feels and how she feels. Melinda gains her confidence to speak in public freely again by the end of the story.
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.
This person could read. Since, someone thought that Beetle was that girl named Alyce. So, she changed her name to Alyce. Since someone thought that she was someone who could read, that also raised her self esteem. Then her self esteem dropped in chapter
At the end of the story she finally found her voice and was able to stand up for herself. In the beginning, Melinda didn't talk to anyone, barely even to her parents. She says, “I have tried so hard to forget every second of that stupid party and here I am in the middle of a hostile crowd that hates me for what I had to do. I can't tell them what really happened” (Anderson, 28).
This film documents the academic struggles and success of Omarina Cabera. It follows her middle school years in an impoverished middle school in Bronx, NY to her graduation from an elite New England Prep school. It explains how she overcame a childhood of poverty and instability and became more than just another high school dropout statistic. According to the film during research conducted by Robert Balfanz, one of the nation’s top education researchers, he discovered that if a 6th grade child in a high poverty school is absent more than 20% of the time, or fails a math or English course or receives an unsatisfactory behavior grade in a core course, there is a 75% chance they will drop out of high school unless there is decisive intervention.
Another element in this novel is Melinda’s inner conflict, man vs. self. What Melinda has been through greatly affected her everyday life. She struggles with depression, dislikes her appearance, and feels ashamed of herself for something that isn 't her fault: “I want to confess everything, hand over the guilt and mistake and anger to someone else...even if I dump the memory, it will stay with me, staining me” (Anderson 51). Andy Evans, the senior who raped her, made her feel worthless. This situation is much like the one in the novel The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins.
At the beginning of the novel E. struggles to identify with her name. She describes her name as different from herself and does not want to accept her name as part of her identity. In chapter one of the book E. talks about how she does not feel connected to her name but rather detached "In English my name means hope. In Spanish it means too many letters .It means
Names have always held power in literature; whether it is the defeated giant Polyphemus cursing Odysseus due to him pridefully announcing his name or how the true name of the Hebrew god was considered so potent that the word was forbidden. In fact, names were given power in tales dating all the way back to the 24th century B.C.E. when the goddess Isis became as strong as the sun god Ra after tricking him into revealing his true name. And in Toni Morrison’s Beloved, names have a much stronger cultural significance; and in the case of the character known as “Beloved”, her name is essentially her whole existence. Morrison shows the true power a name holds in African American literature through the character known as “Beloved”, as her role in the story becomes defined by the name she is given and changes in the final moments of the chapter.
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.
Melinda, in a lot of ways, starts out like that it the book. She becomes a shell of herself from before the party happened and because no one else was there, she is lonely and doesn't have anybody to go to and to make matters even worse, she’s covered by the reputation that she has formed. In the book, Laurie Halse Anderson uses symbolism to convey exactly what Melinda can't say. In the beginning of the book, Melinda starts high school carrying her emotional wounds with her after something happens mysterious to her at a party during the summer.
