Melinda And Mr. Freeman's Effect On Melinda

At the beginning of the book, Melinda was at a high school party and was sexually assaulted by a senior student. This happened in late August, and Melinda is extremely scarred and traumatized by the incident. In the fall, Melinda is so broken that she cannot even speak – she does not tell anyone what happened

Again, throughout the whole book, Melinda has this odd feeling, she thinks that nobody likes her and is always down on herself. An example from the book that shows this behavior is at the beginning of the book, her first day of high school. "I have entered high school with the wrong hair, the wrong clothes, the wrong attitude. And I don't have anyone to sit with. I am outcast." (Anderson 4) As soon as she enters high school she doubts herself. It's almost as that she believes that since she has entered with the wrong clothes, the wrong hair, and nobody to sit with, that she will never fit in. This shows a sign of hopelessness, she is doubting herself to much. Another example of when Melinda shows sadness and hopelessness is when she hears about Rachelles Halloween party she is throwing. She says, "I knew I wouldn't get an invitation. I would be lucky to get an invitation to my own funeral." (Anderson 41) This shows Melinda again, being

Melinda debates whether to tell Rachel that her current boyfriend was an assaulter. “I could talk to Rachel. (Yeah, right.) I could say I'd heard bad things about Andy. (It would only make him more attractive.) I could maybe tell her what happened. (As if she'd listen. What if she told Andy? What would he do?) (…) I need to do something about Rachel, something for her. Maya tells me without saying anything. I stall. Rachel will hate me. (She already hates me.) She won't listen. (I have to try.) I groan and rip out a piece of notebook paper. I write her a note, a left-handed note, so she won't know it's from me.” (151-152). Melinda finally confronts Rachel and tells her what exactly happened to her, but Rachel did not believe Melinda as she really liked Andy. Rachel apologizes to Melinda when she realizes when Andy attacks Melinda again because he got to know what she told Rachel. Melinda was brave even though she was unexpectedly attacked by Andy for the second time. This time, she fought back before Andy could do anything that was seriously harmful to her and she threatened to stab him with a piece of sharp broken glass. This shows us how Melinda developed from a scared girl to a person who threatened to kill her

When she starts school that fall, no one talks to her about what happened and Melinda ends up staying quiet. She tries to act like the event never happened and this has a very bad impact on her relationships at school. On her first day, it can clearly be seen that she is a social outcast. No one talks to her as they blame her for being the reason the party got busted. This further pushes Melinda into silence, eventually leading her into depression.

Melinda finds help and acceptance from Ivy and Mr.Freeman. Melinda also stops distancing herself from her parents. Furthermore, Melinda comes to grips and acceptance that she was raped and starts to personally recover from this traumatic event. Melinda starts to worry about her former best friend who is dating Andy Evans. Melinda is worried that Andy might not have pure intentions with Rachel.

This quote near the beginning of the book is in the context of Melinda describing her room. She says this because of how it is decorated very strangely. The way she words her sentence implies that she doesn’t know who she was when she was younger, that she is “alien”. Because of this and the fact she has no friends, she can’t relate to anyone, not even her past self. This causes her to be pushed deeper into her depression.

She didn't reveal what happened to Melinda until the end of the third marking period, you only got tidbits of what happened to Melinda during the party in the Summer. Melinda didn't even realize what had happened to her, it felt as if you were going along the story with her.

When she was packing all her pictures to take out of her room in the cleaning closet, she hears the door open and it was Andy. He tried to attack her again for telling Rachel that he raped her. The LaCrosse team heard the noise of Melinda fighting for her protection. They opened the door and caught Andy trying to hurt Melinda. After this all this was confirmed, Melinda felt free. She offered to talk to her mom about her tragic experience even though she had the option to talk about it later. Not everything is made clear at the end of the book, but a couple things are. Melinda was raped, it was not her fault, and she would have never opened up about it and realized she had nothing to do with it without her best friend dating Andy

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.

The story started in an ambiguous atmosphere ,as readers don’t know what happened to Melinda she refused to speak she only wants to live in her isolation. some people in their depression tries to speak, and others chooses to keep themselves silent and get stressed when they are given a heavy workload, like “why me ?” ,as they are too weak or shame to face the world around them ,and this exactly what happened to Melinda in this novel .People experiencing passive anger may not even realize they are angry, because passive angry maybe repressed, it can be hard to recognize. In this long term, these suppressed angry feelings can easily be a main reasson for psychological suffering. As readers can only notice that she carried a folded story that will be displayed through flashback

In the book speak Melinda says “ I try to draw a branch coming out of a tree trunk for the 315th time. It looks so flat, a cheap cruddy drawing. I have no idea how to make it alive.” (pg.55) When she is doing the Trees for her art project she is basically trying to describe herself. Melinda feels like nobody understands her and she doesn't really understand herself. Melinda does not know who she wants to be or who she should be. Melinda loses friends easily so I think it makes her feel less of herself.

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

She is landing at terms with the last item for her. She understands that she needs to analyze what happened. Obviously, Melinda's fundamental inspiration for at last uncovering the conundrum is clear, and it says a remarkable course of action concerning her character. When she sees that Rachel, the pal who sold out her, is in threat of changing into Andy's next misfortune, she is obliged to talk. This display to us that Melinda is solid to their previous history, and that she contemplates the security of others. Considering, all things have an importance at some point or another it covers the epic or the repulsive thusly making it more basic than it is. In the event that you nonchalance to know, is to comprehend that you don't know anything. That is the true blue significance of information, so making everything the furthermore Intriguing and troublesome in her condition. The tree is the motivation driving why she developed her heading and talked up about her circumstance. Disregarding the way that nobody like Melinda she kept her soul solid And battled through her inconveniences of helper school. In this way, Melinda contacted her objective of swinging out to everybody about the bona, fide truly was, and what happened and ensuring everybody knew. Make a point to exhort individuals with respect to the truth of what occurred than enable bits of converse with make and escalate the

She doesn't talk to her family they use post it notes to communicate.Furthermore, she has problems with her friends. All of melinda's old friends hate her because she called the cops at a party.They dropped her like a hot pop tart on the cold friend

A second, factor that has shaped Melinda is her being depressed. At lunch in the chapter 2nd marking Heather was making the point that Melinda