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.
Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson should be mandatory reading for 8th graders due to its take on how trauma can affect the lives of its survivors. Through completed writing, the National Book Award finalist and Golden Kite Award winner, Laurie Anderson captures the thoughts of Melinda Sordino. After she gets raped and has to deal with a misunderstanding that leaves her silent and outcast. This short book of 224 pages is mostly written in short statements. From casual thoughts such as, “I zone out,” to ones with impact like, “Why go to school.”
Laurie Halse Anderson’s realistic fiction book Speak depicts the life of Melinda Sordino, a 9th grader who called the police at a party after being raped and is now a social outcast. The pain from the memories of being raped keep her silent as she struggles through a powerful depression and the problems that go with being in high school. Anderson uses mirrors as a motif throughout the story to portray the stages of depression Melinda goes through. At the start of the story Melinda leads a very depressed hidden life; Anderson uses the mirror to represent this.
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
and she didn’t talk to anyone. Melinda has been trying to overcome her trauma since the start of her freshman year but she hasn't been able to find the courage to overcome it until the end of the year. The book Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson is about a girl named Melinda that had a traumatic experience at a party during the summer because of this Melinda has a hard time making friends going into the 9th grade. Melinda is also conflicted about her individuality and questions if she can trust anyone with being herself.
“You don’t understand, my head voice answers”(28). Written in 1999 by Laurie Halse Anderson, Speak is a book that takes place in the freshman year of a school outcast by the name of Melinda Sordino. After she had ruined an important end-of-the-year summer party by calling the police, she becomes isolated from her classmates and suffers trauma from an unknown event, causing her to be mute. This heart wrenching and ahead-of-its-time story is told in the perspective of Melinda, a victim of sexual assault, and as the story progresses we learn more about the truth hidden behind the thick silence and judgement about what really happened at the party and who was responsible for the unknown incident. After carefully weaving together the elements of
This setting is important because this is where everything happens. This is the most important setting in the story because this is where this kid so called Charles ends up being completely bad. screaming and hitting people. This setting was also in the beginning of the school year if it took place more in the year Charles’ parents would of knew that there was no kid named Charles in his class he was the one that was causing all this trouble the whole entire time throughout the story. At the end of the story it doesn’t go to well once they find out there is no kid named Charles in the
The children in the story were extremely uneducated. Their absence of knowledge was shown through word choice and their dislike for Ms. Moore. Ms. Moore was an educated African American who lived in the same neighborhood as the children.
The story takes place at the height of the Civil Rights Movement in America, when desegregation is finally achieved. Flannery O’Connor’s use of setting augments the mood and deepens the context of the story. However, O’Connor’s method is subtle, often relying on connotation and implication to drive her point across. The story achieves its depressing mood mostly through the use of light and darkness in the setting.
In the novel “And Still We Rise: The Trials and Triumphs of Twelve Gifted Inner-City Students” written by Miles Corwin demonstrates how Inner City Los Angeles is not just full of gangbangers and drug dealers, but also full of success and diversity. Corwin, a reporter, spent a year at Crenshaw High School to document the lives of the students as they manage to fight the obstacles in Advanced Placement English, inside and outside of class. Toni Little, an AP English teachers, also struggles this year due to the fact of discrimination for being the only white teacher. Corwin also spent the year with another AP English teacher, Anita Moultrie, who is Little’s “nemesis.” After taking several beatings of discrimination from Moultrie, the school
Speak Journal Response This journal is in response to the novel Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson. As a coming-of-age contemporary novel, Speak discusses many sensitive issues that are still prominent even today. In this story, we explore the life of Melinda Sordino, a fourteen-year-old girl who is beginning high school right after experiencing an utterly traumatic event: rape. Melinda is left friendless, with no one to help and support her after what happened.
Speak is a book written about the internal and external conflicts that protagonist, Melinda faces after being raped by Andy Evans (“IT”) and hated by her peers for ruining an end-of-summer party. This has traumatized Melinda and she is too afraid to speak up. Anderson enhances the big theme of sadness and depression through similes, metaphors,
Read the following E.E. cummings poem carefully, and then in a well-organized essay, analyze how cummings uses language to describe the setting as well as to convey mood and meaning. In the uniquely constructed Anyone Lived In A Pretty How Town, E.E. Cummings uses abstract grammar, symbolism and free indirect speech to subjectively describe a story of “anyone” living in a “pretty how town” that conveys the poem’s mood and meaning. The most distinctive and noticeable aspect of Anyone Lived In A Pretty How Town is its syntax.
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.
She told the class that when her mom when to bed she stole the money back. One boy then told a story about stealing money from his brother, just because he felt like it. This groups talks a lot about who is mad at whom
