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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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Furthermore, Melinda had admitted that she could “[feel] the wind blow and hear the mockingbird whistling on the way back to her nest. But when [she tries] to carve it, it looks like a dead tree, toothpicks, a child’s drawing. [She cannot] bring it to life” (78). She wistfully imagines confessing her distress, but she remains reluctant and retreats from transitioning into speaking again. There are many moments within the novel where Anderson uses symbolism to illustrate Melinda's desire to refurbish her life as this one, but it is hard for Melinda to do so without the choice of acknowledging what happened.

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Her tree has finally come to life, it’s breathing and flourishing. Now that Melinda’s secret is out she has her voice back. She is growing and coming to life once again just like her

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In Speak Laurie Halse Anderson uses trees to represent Melinda's emotional growth throughout the novel. At this point of the story she has just been raped and is feeling depressed and alone and it makes her feel “diseased”. “My last tree looks like it died from some fungal infection”(92). At the start of the story she’s in a bad place because she feels that she can't tell anybody about what happened because they might not have a positive output on the things she has been through. When she starts school, everybody hates her for what she did at the party and it makes her feel unwanted.

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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 the end of the novel, Melinda was almost a different person from the one the reader saw at the beginning of the story. On the last day of school, Melinda describes her tree, “My tree is definitely breathing; little shallow breaths like it just showed up through the ground this morning. This one is not perfectly symmetrical. The bark is rough, he said. I try to make it look as if initials had been carved into it a long time ago.

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When one thinks of highschool, they might think about the schoolwork, the grades, and the tests. On the other hand, they might recall the parties, the fun, and the friends. The memories of parties for some, might be positive and happy. However, as for Melinda, the main character in Laurie Halse Anderson’s book, Speak, high school parties will always be thought of as a traumatic experience. Laurie Halse Anderson uses inspiration from her childhood, the culture of the 1990’s, and her optimistic philosophies to write the young adult novel, Speak.

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As Melinda starts to heal, her trees start to look more lively and put together. Compared to when she couldn't even draw a tree at the beginning of the year. Her strength also shined through her artwork. She could imagine the tree almost perfectly in her head, but she couldn't put it on paper. On page 78 of the book Melinda stated, “I can see it in my head: a strong old oak tree with a wide scarred trunk and thousands of leaves reaching to the sun.”

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But after the rape, Melinda is not happy with anything in her life and she is always stressed out. This is represented when she states, “But when I try to carve it, it looks like a dead tree, toothpicks, a child’s drawing. I can’t bring it to life. I’d love to give it up” (78). Melinda has changed dramatically, and this is represented by the tree she sees versus the tree she tries to make.

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The recurring use of trees allows readers to understand Melinda feelings beyond words, as readers are able to visualize her feelings literally through art. Readers of YA readers use symbolism as a way to understand the mood of a novel; at the beginning of the novel, Melina selects a tree as her year-long art project, where she is asked to make her “object say something, express and emotion, speak to every person who looks at it” (Anderson 11). As struggles express emotion through her tree, she is equally incompetent with sharing what occurred the night the police was called. Her meager attempts to construct her tree reflects her misery, “I’ve been painting watercolors of trees that have been hit by lightning…..

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The palm tree is a nice touch. A broken dream, perhaps? Plastic honeymoon, deserted island? “ (64) The art teacher in the story list all kinds of ideas that could be symbols in Melinda’s sculpture. However the newfound artist changed her sculpture after hearing these words.

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The tree acts as a symbol of growth and strength, something that Melinda tries to find in her life after her rape. As the story goes on, Melinda watches a real tree being cut down and listens to her father explain, “He’s not chopping it down. He’s saving it. Those branches were long dead

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As she stands on the roof, she sees a window into her past. Her seeing the tree of life could imply that she is breaking free and becoming unowned and wild once more. Even in her twisted mind, she manages to make her final decision, which suggests that she is reconnecting with her former self. She is shown connections she has to her previous life. She sees “the sky with all [her] life in it...

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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.

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