Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson is about a girl named Melinda who goes through traumatic events throughout her freshman year of high school. The novel also examines her relationships and attempts to communicate with other characters, as well as how she finds the courage to speak up for herself. Trees and seeds play a major symbolic role in the novel because they represent Melinda’s growth throughout the story. Throughout the novel, trees and seeds are mentioned numerous times.
The book I read was Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson. The title of the book represents so much of the entire book even though it’s just one simple word. The main character, Melinda, was raped at a high school party while she drank too much. She later called the cops and lost all of her friends. After the party, she was an outcast.
She is reminded of the violence that torn not only communities apart but families as well. How the social norms of the day restricted people’s lives and held them in the balance of life and death. Her grandfathers past life, her grandmother cultural silence about the internment and husband’s affair, the police brutality that cause the death of 4 young black teenagers. Even her own inner conflicts with her sexuality and Japanese heritage. She starts to see the world around her with a different
Historical Fiction Essay "A story can always break into pieces while it sits inside a book on a shelf and, decades after we have read it even twenty times, it can open us up, by cut or caress, to a new truth." – Andre Dubus, from Movable Meditations. The story Chains, by Laurie Halse Anderson takes place in New York during the year 1777 where the main character, Isabel, an African-American slave is fighting for her and her younger sisters freedom during the American Revolutionary War. The theme developed throughout Chains is perseverance and courage. In Chains the protagonist is Isabel, a thirteen year old girl, who was enslaved in Rhode Island.
The theme of this book, is that if there is a situation where you can say or do something to help, do it, because that is farm foreign than the pain that a bully can bring us. Not only can
The next lens, formal, focuses on critically evaluating the wording and structure used within the book. Speak is told from a teenager's perspective, so it was very important that the language matched that. Anderson did an excellent job of matching the language so that the story seemed realistic to the reader. Another element hidden in the language of Speak is the significance of the tree. When Melinda is given the art assignment to create a tree she struggles until she starts to work through her assault.
If people give up all the time individuals will never get far in life or become successful, but if people try their best until people get better or at least try, people are less likely to fail. To begin, in the realistic fiction novel, Hatchet by Gary Paulsen, there is a kid named Brian Robeson whose parents are divorced. So he gets on a plane to go see his dad, but usually stays mainly with his mom. When he goes on the plane for the first time since the divorce his plane crashes in the middle of a forest. Brian has to learn how to survive in the wilderness and hope he gets saved.
Kidd uses the characterization of Lily, T. Ray, May, and Deborah to demonstrate the theme that people’s lives are more complex than they appear. By using these characters, Kidd demonstrates how judgements are made about people based on their actions. People don’t always think about how a person really feels on the inside and they do not know about everything that goes on in their head. This is a theme that is significant to the world at any time period because everyone can relate to it. Therefore, the theme of this story is significant in people’s lives
After Melinda admits to herself that she was raped, Melinda starts to realize that
The mistreatment of Indigenous people in Canada is a leading factor in the loss of their identity; a tragic consequence of colonialism and systemic injustice. “Totem” by Thomas King, an American-born novelist and member of the Order of Canada, conveys the message of the mistreatment of Indigenous peoples by the government with the use of various literary elements. King voices his opinions about the government’s terrible and shallow decisions they make and solutions they come up with. Comparatively, “I lost my talk” by Rita Joe, a Mi'kmaw poet and member of the Order of Canada, also speaks of the tragedies that the Indigenous peoples have faced, but through a more personal lens where she talks about her experiences as a former student of Shubenacadie Indian Residential School. Although "Totem" and "I lost my talk" differ in their usage of tone and imagery, they both
The novel follows Stevie an eleven year old girl who lives in Southside Chicago throughout her middle and high school years. Stevie goes through the social pressure of her peers and family to tell her how to act, think, and look. Slowly throughout
“Speak up, because the day you don’t speak up for the things that matter to you is the day your freedom truly ends”. Speak up when you have the change because if you don’t you will end up like me . I lied to my mom about doing something. I know, everybody as lied to their parents. But she’s a mom
On their way, they stop at a place to get food. Where the grandmother has the chance to talk to men about the man that had escaped jail and the chat about how it was hard to find good people in the time they were living. This story concludes with the family being shot by the murderer which they found on their way while they changed their route. How does the author use the characters in this story to develop a theme?
Melinda appears to be a snitch, but in reality she is just afraid, broken, and scared to tell everyone what really happened. “I just want to sleep. A coma would be nice. Or amnesia. Anything, just to get rid of this, these thoughts, whispers in my mind.
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.
