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Symbolize Melinda's Tree In Speak By Laurie Halse Anderson

557 Words3 Pages

Speak Essay Summer parties are fun, but what if something life changing happens at one of those parties. A 15-year old girl, Melinda, is entering high school. She got raped over the summer at a party and called the cops. Because of her calling the cops, she has no friends. Melinda is in art class and has chosen a tree as her “destiny”. Melinda’s tree in Speak symbolize Melinda’s feelings. First, the tree in Speak symbolizes Melinda’s feelings. In this scene, Melinda is in Biology class, and she is drawing a tree with David, her lab partner. “I try to connect the branch to a tree. It looks pretty good better than anything I have drawn so far in art” (Anderson 110). This quote shows that Melinda is drawing better than she has ever drawn before. She is putting more effort into her drawings. Melinda is feeling better because she has a friend to connect with. Her feelings are growing just like her trees. This shows how Melinda’s trees represent her feelings. …show more content…

In this scene, Melinda and Ivy (her “friend”) are sitting on a fountain in a mall drawing a tree. “I draw at trunk, Ivy adds a branch, I extend the branch… I start to erase it, but Ivy stops me. ‘It’s fine the way it is… You have a great start there…’ She’s right” (Anderson 146). This quote shows that Melinda is finally realizing a mistake can be turned into something good. She is opening up and talking to more people. Melinda is feeling better knowing that it is ok to make mistakes. This shows how Melinda’s tree that she drew with Ivy, makes her understand mistakes are ok. She now knows that she can change a mistake into a good

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In much the same way, what goes on inside of us is like the roots of a tree. " When reading the novel Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson, the reader will steadily notice that, as the story goes on, Melinda's artistic abilities will improve. In this essay, I will explain how trees are used to portray Melinda's transformation, by using quotes from the text and support to back it up. In her first Art class, Melinda randomly chooses the "tree" as the object she will try to draw for the rest of her school year.

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Their teacher, Mr. Freeman assigns the class a year-long project to pick a random object and turn it into a real piece of art. Melinda’s object was a tree. As the year goes on her art develops and her tree does as well. And by the end of the year when she has begun to fully heal and move past what happened to her, her tree is finished, and a beautiful piece of art. Melinda’s tree is brought up throughout the book as a symbol of how she has

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Melinda picks the word “tree.” Annoyed, she goes to pick a new word, but is stopped by her art teacher. Melinda struggles with her project, unable to make her trees look alive and un-child like. “I can see it in my head: a strong oak tree with a wide scarred trunk and thousands of leaves reaching to the sun…. I can’t bring it to

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Silence has a defeating presence, one that can both imprison and liberate. In the book Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, finding one's voice is a huge struggle when the main character, Melinda, goes to a party over the summer and gets sexually assaulted. The story is described in a framework of four main “marking periods’’ as she starts her journey through her first year of high school as a 13 year old girl. At the start of the book (the first marking period), we soon learn that Melinda’s old friends now hate her and begin to get humiliated in various situations. A girl named Heather distracts Melinda from her old best friend Rachel by trying to include her in different clubs.

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At this section of the book, the mom is comparing her daughter to the tree. The quote is the mother’s response to Jeanette’s desire to take care of the tree and help it grow straight. Jeanette is relaying the idea that some parents do everything to help their kids grown into strong, perfect ‘trees’. However, in the mom's point of view, she sees the tree that has withstood hardships as more beautiful than one that has not. She may not provide society’s idea of a perfect life for her child, but she is allowing her daughter to face adversity.

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