Character Analysis: Ask Me To Help You Find The Wind

Mr. Freeman backs up his praise by showing Melinda something about her work she herself might not be aware of. He tells her the truth as best as he can. She picks a piece of paper out of a globe for her project, and she has to draw a tree. Melinda thinks that the project is easy but the more times she draws the tree, the more she sees its that she can’t. The trees represent life and death.

Melinda, the main character of speak was raped at a summer party. She calls the cops and that is where it all started. When Melinda reaches high school she is faced with all her old friends. They all hate her and want nothing to do with her, because of her calling the cops. Throughout the whole book Melinda runs into tough situations that eventually lead to her standing up for herself. Eventually, everyone finds out the truth, of why Melinda calls the cops. Although Melinda learns to stand up for herself, throughout the book she shows signs of depression such as poor performance in school, sadness and hopelessness, and withdrawal of friends and activities.

Ironically, the person Melinda finds as the outlet to help her express her feelings is her art teacher, Mr. Freeman. In a class assignment, Melinda is assigned to create an art project based on a tree. She begins to express her inner angst through this art project. At one point, she uses dried bones to sculpt a picture of a skeleton. Then she glues broken knives and forks to the project so that the bones look like the plastic utensils are stabbing them. It is a grim depiction of how Melinda feels, and is immediately praised by Mr. Freeman.

When Melinda draws for her art class she has to draw trees and the trees represent her life and how she feels. When Melinda was drawing the trees she said “ But when I try and carve it, it looks like a dead tree, toothpicks, a childs drawing, I can’t bring it to life. I would love to give it up, quit, but i can't think of anything else to do so i keep chipping away at it.” (pg.78) As she draws the trees she realizes that they can represent her and her life. The trees are dead looking with branches, thats how Melinda feels she feels like nobody cares and nobody is there for her. Melinda does not know who she wants to be and throughout the novel she will figure it out. High School helps Melinda know who she wants to

Mr. Freeman, Melinda’s art teacher, was a huge impact on Melinda, helping her find her voice in various ways. One way being through art. Mr. Freeman was one of the only characters in the book to actually listen to Melinda and what she had to say. However, he listened in an odd way. He read her emotions through what she made in art class and interpreted it in a way that made Melinda feel happy about what she had done. Art class let Melinda show her emotions in a way she found satisfying and rewarding. In addition, Mr. Freeman offered an ear to Melinda. After dropping her off at Effert’s, the store her mother manages, he says

At first she tries her hardest to make it look like a tree but it never comes out to look like a good one. The art teacher had said “you will spend the rest of the year learning how to turn your object into a piece of art” (12,Anderson) which means the object is going to be growing like how Melinda is growing by the end of the year. Her growth is shown through this tree as she continues to redraw it and gets better at drawing towards the end of the story. The tree is a symbol of Melinda getting stronger and becoming able to communicate her

Question One: Doug has a difficult family life. His father behaves less like a parent and more like a bully, but in Marysville, Doug meets other adults who show him kindness and compassion. Name a few of the adult characters in Okay For Now who offer Doug guidance and instruction. What does Doug learn from them? Support your response with evidence from the text.

In Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak, trees symbolize Melinda’s growth throughout her life to stay sane and pass the horrific time of her life. Depression is her first phase, when she starts to paint the trees that were hit by lightning. It is also shown by her not talking to many people. She starts to realize that she cannot be perfect when she imagines a beautiful oak tree but really cannot carve it properly. Her third phase comes when the trees outside her house has a few sick branches and she decides to let go of the present Melinda who is not letting her grow and nurture the old Melinda, the one before the party, the fun and outgoing one. The last phase, and tree was the one she drew for

Within “SPEAK,” Laurie Halse Anderson uses Melinda’s artwork to express Melinda. At the Beginning of the story Melinda gets a year long art project to draw a tree. At the beginning, she struggles because she is still feeling pain and depression from getting raped. But, Throughout the story, she slowly grows and comes out of her “shell,” and becomes better and better with it; So by the

Potentially more in a general sense, Mr. Freeman is an insightful educator who treats understudies in like manner creatures, and tries to show to them the truth of his life, past his part as an instructor. His tirades about the school board may exhaust Melinda, yet she sees Mr. Freeman talking reality as he sees it, especially to the understudies, in spite of while doing everything considered could cause him hurt. Despite whether this is mind boggling, appalling, or something in the midst of is easily shown off course. Undoubtedly, so Mr. Freeman gets way energetic, however, this is definitely what Melinda needs right now. Mr. Freeman moves down his acclaim by indicating Melinda something about her work she herself won't not be intentionally mindful of. He reveals to her reality and moreover can be typical. This in a like way proposes pushing her to upgrade the situation when her work fails miserably. Melinda's the sort of young lady who perceives such reliability, regardless of when it stings. Melinda thinks the task is too much essential at, making it difficult in the first place, yet the more she tries to draw a tree, the more she sees that she can't . Melinda is masking a dull confuse. She won't chat with anybody about it, and the more her emotions overpower her, the more she draws trees. Trees address life and end. They are an unfaltering wellspring of

Jimmy knows too well the agonies of abandonment. First, when his mother, Cecilia, ran away with Richard to pursue a better lifestyle. Then, due to his father’s, Damacio Baca, alcoholisms and violent behavior; he also had to leave Jimmy behind. In spite of the drawbacks from abandonment to being a maximum security prisoner in Arizona State Prison, Jimmy preserver’s the darkness of prison by overcoming his illiteracy. However Cecilia and Damacio is not as fortunate as their child; Cecilia is shot by Richard after confronting him for a divorce and Damacio chokes to death after he is released from the detox center(Baca 263). Therefore the most significant event in this section of the memoir, A Place to Stand by Jimmy Santiago Baca is the death of Jimmy’s parents.

Grace has been told for more than half her life that she was crazy. Her mother’s death that she witnesses was an accident, there was no scarred man, and there was nothing she could do to change what had happened. But Grace knew they were wrong. With the help of her friends Noah, Megan and Rosie, she managed to discover that the scarred man was Dominic, the first love of her mother, who was there to kill her mother, but chose instead to stage her death. Grace came down just as Dominic was taking the picture, and picked up the gun that was lying on the floor. Firing blinding, she missed Dominic and shot her mother instead. The traumatic moment of shooting her mother was blocked from Grace’s mind as it was unable to handle what she did. Her family tries to protect her from this, saying it was an accident, trying to get Grace to stop pushing. When pushing too hard, Grace discovers the truth of what happened that night, and what she did, and with the

As Mr. Freeman says his reaction to her artwork, Melinda stays quiet and in shock because she expected more of a positive comment then a serious negative input. When Freeman says his last words about the artwork, “this has meaning. Pain”(65) Melinda leaves before he can comment on anything else. She acts in this manner because Melinda 's art project shows how she is trapped inside herself. While Freeman is giving his input Melinda sees how all the objects she just used to make a picture actually are painful pieces in her life that shows that she is in a place of need. Melinda is calling for help through art without realizing it. Acknowledging, Freemans negativity Melinda still

Instead of just drawing a tree, Melinda adds color. “ For a solid week I’ve been painting watercolors of trees that have been hit by lightning” (p.30). Melinda improves by adding color, but she still made a sarcastic comment because she isn’t confident. Another way she showed growth is she was creative and made a memorial for the bird she lost on thanksgiving and relates it with trees. “ I want to glue the bones together in a heap like firewood, get it?

In the novel Catch Me If You Can by Frank William Abagnale, Frank is a well defined static character. Even though he faces different challenges throughout the novel, he remains the same a the end of the story as he was in the beginning. Being said this, he still continued to run away from his problems and did cons. He is a confident individual who ran away from home at a young age to find a life for himself. Frank is a smart, young and charismatic boy. During his early teen years, his parents started to go through a divorce, which left him torn between whom to choose to stay with. After learning about the divorce that was about to take place, Frank decides to runaway. Frank states, “One June morning of 1964, I woke up and knew it was time to go.