Summary Of 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 the novel, Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, the chapter prey shows that the main character, Melinda, learns from her mistake and stands up against her worst nightmare, Andy Evans. After algebra class, Melinda goes to her closet and grabs her Maya Angelou poster. After Melinda is finished grabbing her things from her closet, Andy Evans pushes Melinda back into her closet, “somebody slams into my chest back into the closet. The lights flicks and the door closes. I am trapped with Andy Evans” (193).
Imagine being through a traumatic event and didn’t know how to tell someone, or maybe not had anyone to talk to about how you were feeling? That's how Melinda Sordino felt as the main character in the book Speak by Halse Anderson. Melinda was going through the hells of highschool alone after being raped at a party, and ditched by all of her friends who she thought cared about her. She is bullied, harassed, picked on, and failing all of her classes. Except for art class where she finds the only place that she feels safe anymore.
Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson is a book about a girl named Melinda Sordino. In the beginning of this book the audience meets Melinda as she is the main character and she describes her first day of high school starting with an assembly. Throughout the book you read about her life but she goes back to the past recalling of something that happened at the end of the summer; in a couple of instances she comes across someone that she refers to as “IT”. When reading you don't know who this “IT” is but it is developed over the story by her having flashbacks to that night or dropping a hint of what happened. During a seminar at the beginning of the book Melinda meets someone named Heather who is new and becomes her friend but ultimately leaves her
Speak is a novel by Laurie Halse Anderson. The author’s purpose in writing this book was to tell a story about sexual assault and to show real-life victims that things do get better. There are 198 pages present. Speak has won many awards such as A Michael L. Printz Honor Book, a SCBWI Golden Kite Award, and BCCB Blue Ribbon, along with many others. Every character in this book plays an important role; however, three important roles in particular are Melinda, Heather, and David Petrakis.
Melinda uses a hyperbole to over exaggerate the situation of being trapped in the janitor’s closet with the rapist, Andy Evans. Comparatively, Hara Estroff Marano, the author of The Art of Resilience, writes, “Resilient people don’t walk between the raindrops, they have scars to show for their experience” (Marano). To get her point across, Marano had to make an overstatement by telling the readers that resilient people don’t take the easy route, they have
Her book describes the hardship and struggle she faced growing up in Little Rock and what it was like to be hurt and abused all throughout high school.
Samantha Dabros Mr. Chomin 9th grade Language Arts 17 January 2023 Speak The book Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson is about a girl named Melinda who goes to Merryweather High School. The theme of this book is finding your voice because Melinda was assaulted before she even went to high school. And the way it was written, it was meant to send that message. All books are meant to have a message but this seems to want that message to get across to people.
She went on to say that the book was symbolic of a “[p]art of [her] that needs some reassurance”(Anderson qtd in Tannert-Smith). Since its 1999 publication, the book has gone on to win numerous awards and become a New York Times bestseller (“Laurie” 1). Twenty years later, Anderson wrote her own story in her 2019 memoir Shout, sharing her opinions on what she experienced. Following her 1996 nightmare, Anderson began to tell her own story through Melinda. Anderson used her own life experiences to shape her character, incorporating specific anecdotes to tie them together.
One of them is how Melinda must deal with the trauma of Andy’s assault. Melinda constantly sees Andy around school and it terrifies her. Just the sight of him is enough to cause a panic and remind her of the night it happened. Melinda is left with excess anxiety, and it causes her to behave coldly towards others. This results in Melinda’s only friend abandoning her because her behavior is too upsetting.
Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand contains usage of figurative language, such as symbolism, allegory, irony, and other literary devices that include tone and perspective. That creates one of the longest-running New York Times bestsellers of all time, Unbroken has spent more than four years on the Times list, fifteen weeks at number one, and counting. The book is the winner of the Los Angeles Times Book of the Year Award for Biography. The perspective of this story is written in third person because she does not just want to entertain the people who reads the book, she wants to inform people of Louie’s story.
Looking at society today, one is frequently reminded to keep one’s head held high, to push through, and trust the process. In Paper Butterflies, a novel beautifully written by Lisa Heathfield, tells the reader a story of trauma over the course of 14 years. Lisa Heathfield published Paper Butterflies, her second novel, in 2016, which focuses on the main character, June Kingston. June tells the reader of her difficulty speaking up for herself, as well as years of mistreatment. The use of a first person narrative from Before until After the incident of the fire impacts the reader’s understanding of June processing her abuse, trauma, and resilience with a spark of hope.
Melinda was raped as a young girl heading into her first year of high school and what happened after that was a catastrophe and would change her life and her peers view of her. Melinda perpetually haunted by her treacherous past memories struggled to stay happy and sane throughout her overwhelming first year of high school. Melinda evolves over time as she longs to be her past happy self again she slowly but surely begins to regain her happiness and self-confidence. With life-changing events coming at Melinda every which way, she experiences the highs and the lows and finds little things in life like her extraordinary passion for art to help her get through the toughest times in her life. This story will make your heart melt with sorrow and compassion, but also bring to you a remarkable story with realistic like events and settings.
She writes many novels on difficult subjects in society (“Laurie Halse Anderson-Mad Woman in the Forest”). In Speak, the main character, Melinda Sordino, was raped at the end of the summer before her freshman year. The novel follows her hardships as an outcast in the jungle-like environment of high school and her struggles to speak up for herself when she needs to the most (Anderson 3-198). In the novel Speak, Laurie Halse Anderson
Her story is devastating, but her journal stirred people with its positive manner. The writing of this young girl helped struggling people
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