Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak

“Speak” is book about a young girl who loses her voice after being raped and slowly gains it back over time. Laurie Halse Anderson uses an internal voice throughout the book to show the havoc that is attacking Melinda’s mind. This adds to the theme of being outcast and isolated because the she has no one to really talk to.

Speak is a cleaver and an ironic title for a story in which the main character chooses not to speak. The story is written in first-person narration from the point of view of protagonist, Melinda Sordino. Speak is written like an interior monologue in the mind of an introverted teenage girl, like excerpts from her personal diary during her miserable freshman year of high school. Instead of blending in and finding her way through high school. She withdraws and secludes herself from the other students. She calls herself an "outcast." Melinda is so desperate to hide from the world; she turns an old janitor's closet at the high school into her safe haven. She cuts classes to hide in her closet. How lonely could this teenage girl be? All

Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson, is a story written in the first person about a young girl named Melinda Sordino. The title of the book, Speak, is ironically based on the fact that Melinda chooses not to speak. The book is written in the form of a monologue in the mind of Melinda, a teenage introvert. This story depicts the story of a very miserable freshman year of high school. Although there are several people in her high school, Melinda secludes herself from them all. There are several people in her school that used to be her friend in middle school, but not anymore. Not after what she did over the summer. What she did was call the cops on an end of summer party on of her friends was throwing. Although

In Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak, the protagonist, a freshman named Melinda must learn the key to recovery after enduring extreme trauma. She struggled to find someone to speak to, due to the school shunning her for calling the police at the party. Throughout Speak, Melinda seeks to recover from the trauma she experienced, especially the cruel actions from her ex-friends. Through symbolism, Laurie Halse Anderson displays the theme in Melinda's perspective.

“It is my first morning of high school. I have seven new notebooks, a skirt I hate, and a stomachache,” (Anderson 3). These are Melinda Sordino's first thoughts as she enters her first year of high school. Melinda dreads having to be around so many people and is shunned by other students for calling the police at a summer party. She falls into depression and decides to stay silent about what happened. As the school year goes on, Melinda knows that she will have to face her biggest fear: to speak. Laurie Halse Anderson, author of Speak, uses numerous archetypes and allusions to put a powerful impact on readers. These archetypes and allusions make Melinda’s struggles relatable to real life problems and situations and reflect universal

Culture plays a huge part in how people are raised, and their perspective of the world we live in. Everyone sees the world differently based on their beliefs. The author of “Speak” (by Laurie Halse Anderson), show Melinda’s culture through rhetoric techniques such as imagery, allusion, and tone. The author uses imagery to show Melinda’s culture by using how she views certain rooms or areas in her eyes.

William F. Halsey explains, "All problems become smaller if you don't dodge them but confront them." This shows that facing a difficulty face to face will help it go away. In Speak, mute Melinda was unable to overcome her struggle since she attempted to “dodge” the truth. However, when Melinda finally spoke out about what happened to her, she immediately felt better about the struggle she was dealing with. The main theme of the novel and ancillary texts is overcoming obstacles. This theme is expressed through the conflict, symbolism, and foreshadowing throughout the texts. Laurie Halse Anderson’s use of literary elements in Speak, as well as the devices in the article, “The Art of Resilience” and the poem “If” help the common theme of overcoming obstacles throughout a time of growth and change evolve throughout the story.

Throughout Speak, names are given in certain instances to reflect on one's character. We see a whole bunch of names, good and bad given to people that affect Melinda in some way. In Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, names are powerful. For example, Mr. Freeman’s name represents who he is as a character.

In the novel Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, the message the author is trying to portray is that speaking and conveying your emotions is vital to expressing feelings.Talking to someone releases a sense of relief for now somebody else knows and that specific information is not as powerful to only the protagonist. Opening up to someone releases how the protagonist feels, which is vital because then that someone will help Melinda get past the event that occurred. If Melinda doesn’t speak up and convey her emotions to someone about the event that occurred, people will start treating her poorly.In the novel Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, the message the author is trying to portray is that speaking and conveying your emotions is vital to expressing

The novel Speak by Laurie Hales Anderson shows Melinda Sordino struggling through the year, and her recovery from the painful memory of getting raped at the party in summer break. In the beginning of the story, the story shows how bad Melinda feels and then she changes and starts growing and at the final stage of the story Melinda becomes a strong hard oaktree-like person. In the book Speak, the author symbolizes the tree to show Melinda’s change from being an outcast to being an accepted person; this also supports the theme: time can help heal one’s painful memories.In the beginning of the year, her trees looked like trees that existed nowhere on earth, but by the end of the year, her trees were breathing and looked as if they had shot up

The book, Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson is a fictional story about the struggles a high schooler is faced with everyday. In this book, many different things are portrayed including: fear, rejection, tension, anxiety, etc. Although Merryweather High School is fictional and not what people presume of high school, it is very similar and has many of the same aspects such as the role of the teachers, the way people would clique together and leave others out, and how Melinda became known as a “loser.”

In the book“Speak” by Laurie Halse Anderson, the main character is “Melinda Sordino who is a freshmen in highschool that is having tough times fitting in after she called the cops on a party she was in and now almost everyone hates her, but then along the way she finds some friends who help her out. The message of this story is that no matter what you do you can always come through and defeat your fears of high school.

Speak was written by Laurie Halse Anderson and published in 1999. It is written from the point of view of Melinda, a high school freshmen whose world got turned upside down after a traumatic summer event. The story follows Melinda through 9th grade as she deals with depression, PTSD, and social exclusion and learns about standing up for herself. The theme of Speak is to stand up for yourself. This is clear because if Melinda had stood up for herself the first time, she wouldn’t have been raped and Andy Evans wouldn’t have continued to target her.

In our novel Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson, multiple settings are present. The overall setting is in a school called Merryweather High School in a small town. The main character, Melinda, describes her first day there, “we pass janitors painting over the sign...school colors will stay purple and gray…”(3, 4). The school mascot was the Trojans, but the janitors were painting over the sign because the mascot was changing. In the school, the overall mood is dark and angry. Melinda called the police to a party, and now she is a social outcast, therefore school is not a good place for her. However, there are a couple places inside the school that she feels better in. There is her art classroom, which is at the opposite end of the school, “The

Recently I read the novel, Speak, by Laurie Anderson. Speak is a story wherein which a young girl named Melinda Sordino struggles with life as a freshman after calling the cops in at an end-of the-summer bash for unknown reasons. Since she won’t say why she did so, her peers now either ignore her or worse, talk to her. “The kids behind me laugh so loud so I know they’re laughing about me.” (pg. 2) People that were once her friends treat her as if she was never there or acknowledge her a not so positive way. I turn around, it’s Rachel… Her eyes meet mine for a second. ‘I hate you’ she mouths silently.“(pg. 3) Melinda is so traumatized by the incident that occurred at the party that she rarely speaks through words anymore and instead tries to