Literary Devices In Speak By Laurie Halse Anderson

What would you do if the person you care the most about was suffering from depression? In Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, the narrator, Melinda Sordino, suffers from depression and insecurity after being molested by a senior, Andy Evans. Over time, her emotions change positively. In her art class, she was assigned trees as her project to express emotion. In this novel, trees speak for her because they represent her life, growth, and her refusal to speak.

Students in Merryweather High school struggle to understand that being in their cliques won’t do them any good because all it will do is separate those who have been best friends since the end of time causing social anxiety for others. “Speak” by Laurie Halse Anderson wrote an explicit book of what is the true meaning on how you could change your ways when you speak up instead of staying quiet. So, How does being silent affect the individual themselves? This induces the Students to have trust issues, being mentally corrupted, and to never be true to themselves. Because of these it doesn’t allow something like for example the First Amendment Freedom of speech, this makes me ask what has our world come to?

The book Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson tells the terrible highschool experience of freshman, Melinda Sordino. She describes her feelings as she walks through the hall, people staring at her as though she were some sort of horrid creature, for calling the police at a party over the summer. Melinda Sordino however never told anyone what had really happened to her on that night. She was raped by a classmate, Andy Evans, during the party. Throughout the whole book Melinda refers to Andy Evans as “IT” because of the fear that he has bestowed upon her after this life changing incident.

The conflicts in Speak and “The Art of Resilience” display the theme overcoming difficulties. In both texts, the challenge is the characters are going through a tough time. When they acted as if nothing bothered them, the issue became increasingly worse. Eventually, the main characters stood up to their problems and overcame them. At the end of Speak, Melinda, the main character of the novel explains, “ IT happened. There is no avoiding it, no forgetting. No running away, or flying, or burying, or hiding. Andy Evans raped me in August when I was drunk and too young to know what was happening. It was my fault. He hurt me. It wasn’t my fault. And I’m not

Laurie Halse Anderson’s fiction novel “Speak” relates the story of a girl from Syracuse, New York. This story surrounds Melinda Sordino who was victimized by Andy Evans at a high school party. She was afterwards labeled an outcast within her school after calling the police to the barn where they all were, getting many of her friends and classmates in trouble for underage drinking. Since none of Melinda’s friends were aware of the rape, they all believed she called the police just to bust them. In the second half of Melinda’s school year, Andy Evans confronts her and attempts to rape her again; however, this is when Melinda finally finds her voice and gets help before Andy Evans takes advantage of

Friends are a big part of your high school life as these are the people you will grow

The protagonist in the novel, Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson is high schooler Melinda Sordino. In the summer before her freshman year, Melinda is abused by an older student. This traumatizing experience turns her friends away from her and drives her into depression. Melinda enters high school at Merryweather High and struggles to find friends, perform well in classes, and even speak. She becomes the school’s freak. Melinda becomes an extremely powerful character as she muddles through depression for nearly a year before finding a way to cope with her mental illness.

The author Laurie Halse Anderson made the book Speak to show and convey that to let out emotions and feel better about one's self, you have to talk to anoter. Speak tells the story of Melinda Sorindo, a ninth grader at Merryweather High School in Syracuse, New York. August before her freshman year, Melinda and her closest friends attend a party with seniors and beer. At the party, Melinda feels uncomfortable and out of place. She gulps down a couple beers before walking outside for some fresh air. While outside, Melinda meets Andy Evans, an attractive senior boy. Andy begins dancing with and kissing Melinda, and Melinda is taken aback but too drunk to say anything. Andy pushes her to the ground and rapes her. In her confusion afterward, Melinda dials 911 and the police arrive at the

Alice Walker once said, “In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they’re still beautiful.” This aligns perfectly with metaphors in the book Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson. In this story, Laurie uses the symbol of a tree to represent the main character, Melinda, as she struggles to overcome a difficult experience in her life. The trees represent Melinda’s transformation from trying to be someone she wasn’t, to becoming utterly depressed, to overcoming her pain, and being a happy, refreshed person.

Have you ever felt so so trapped you could not find the strength to share something? Speak is eye opening and heart wrenching novel written by Laurie Halse Anderson. It tells the story of a girl named Melinda who starts her first year of high school with no friends and a big secret. Her secret? She was a victim of sexual assault committed by a high school senior the summer before her freshman year.

Melinda Sordino had an impossible choice to make, and at the time she didn’t know it was an impossible choice. At the time she wasn’t thinking about her friends shunning her or her high school calling her a loser, she was only thinking about saving herself, but from what? Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson portrays Melinda Sordino’s freshman year at Merryweather High School in Syracuse, New York. During the summer Melinda went to a party and called the police which caused all of her friends to ignore her. Melinda's only friend is Heather, a new student, who tries to get Melinda involved in her schemes to gain popularity.

In the novel Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, Melinda is attacked at an end-of-summer-party, which sends her into a state of numbness. We explore the three elements of |Melinda’s basic traits and how they change throughout the novel. Her traits change drastically as the novel progresses. Melinda Sordino is revealed as depressed, hopeless, and brave.

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

When we fall down, it takes resilience to get back up, because without resilience, what reason do we have to rise again? It was on March 14th, my 19th birthday, that I began making my way through Karen Reivich and Andrew Shatté’s The Resilience Factor. As a college freshman living away from home for the first time, I can use some advice on how to respond to adversity. This is why I picked up The Resilience Factor, despite being dubious of the “self-help” genre. A beautiful day at Griffith observatory, overlooking Hollywood, made for the perfect opportunity to learn how to keep going in the face of struggle. What more apt setting, where so many dreams are chased after for lifetimes, could there be to find the elusive key to resilience? After

Has anyone lived a life without misfortune? Doubtable; even the person with what could be described as the ideal life deals with some form of adversity. The novel, Speak, and the short story, The Third and Final Continent, both use plot as a way to convey themes of hardship. Moreover, these texts both use symbolism in order to develop their themes as well. The Art of Resilience and Speak utilize characterization as a method of developing their respective themes. Speak, The Third and Final Continent, and The Art of Resilience each deal with the theme that all people must learn to cope with adverse situations.