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What Is The Significance Of The Closets In Speak

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In the book, Speak, we see the author Laurie Halse Anderson intentionally use symbols to portray the way the main character is feeling. The first-person perspective of the book allows us to understand inner thoughts and feelings of Melinda, this is where many of the symbols come from. I decided to do a visual representation of the closets in Speak to take a deep dive into the different aspects of the book that lead to a rollercoaster of emotions. The closets in the book act as a safe haven for Melinda. The escape from reality is that she needs to be together with her thoughts, “The best place to figure this out is my closet, my throne room, my foster home”(150). This acts as a harmful and helpful thing for Melinda in the sense that …show more content…

The first thing inside the closet is the broken mirror. When first going into the janitor's closet she sees that the mirror is bolted to the wall, so she chooses to cover it up. The mirror acts as a reminder that she let what happened happen. It makes her look in the mirror at what she has also turned herself into, “The first thing to go is the mirror. It is screwed to the wall, so I cover it with a power of Maya Angelous that the librarian gave me”(50). Later in the book, the mirror was broken, this symbolizes Melinda being mentally broken and not being able to find her true self in her reflection in the mirror. Later the broken mirror acted as revenge against Andy and symbolized the change in character she had from the beginning of the book from being a victim to a survivor, “It wasn’t my fault. He hurt me. It wasn’t my fault. And I'm not going to let it kill me. I can grow'' (198). Another thing I added was the paperclips she's used to hurting herself in the closet. The paperclips made her feel something that wasn’t mentally painful, “If a suicide attempt is a cry for help, then what is this? A whimper, a peep?”(87). This was a turning point in the book because it showed the readers that she wanted to be her old self and not hurt herself but she didn’t know how. The paperclips acted as a guard against the rest of the world, she decided to hurt herself before anybody

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