A Critique of Speak Keeping a secret for a whole school year would be a challenge. One may find that the novel Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson explores the challenges of keeping a secret. The story is about a girl, Melinda Sordino, who gets raped over the summer at a party and is helpless. That year at school all of her best friends are now her ex-friends because they didn’t know what happened. She doesn’t tell anyone about this terrifying memory until the end of the year. Then everything changes. The characters, setting and theme makes this a very compelling story. The first element that contributes to the success of the story was the characters. Melinda Sordino, Rachel Bruin, Heather, Andy Evans and Ivy are the main characters. Melinda is the girl in the book that gets raped by Andy Evans and no one knows about it until the end of the story. Rachel was one of Melinda’s best friend but, has totally turned against Melinda because Melinda called the cops at the party over the summer, but Rachel doesn 't know that Andy raped her. Heather is Melinda’s first friend in high school and was always here friend since she moved from Ohio, like Melinda did. Ivy is another one of Melinda’s best friends. She helps out Melinda a lot in art class and they both also dislike Andy Evans. Another important element that …show more content…
It is clear that keeping a secret for a whole school year would be a challenge, and the characters, setting, and theme all contribute to the success of the novel Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson. Melinda moved on from the challenge of not speaking and finally spoke up in the end and that made everything in her life change for the better. The novel continues to be popular because of the message to speak up when nothing is going your way. Melinda got raped and did not tell anyone about this terrifying memory until the end of the school year. She lived a rough life through her first year of high school. What may one do if they were in the same situation as Melinda was