Speak By Laurie Halse Anderson: An Analysis

“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.

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.

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

Speaking out is a tough task for many people that have dealt with horrible, traumatic situations. In the novel Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson, the main character, Melinda, is one of those people who lost their voice. To be able to understand another person’s emotions, feelings, and situations is very difficult to do, especially because of how our society has formed and became a very judgmental place. Melinda Sordino starts her freshman year at Merryweather High School in Syracuse, New York, to a terrible start; she is a victim of a sexual assault and loses her confidents and voice to speak out. The more she interacts and makes new friends is how she starts to reach out and become more self-sufficient. Few weeks into school Melinda’s only

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson tells the story of Melinda Sordino, a ninth grader that attends Merryweather Highschool in Syracuse, NewYork. The author has a unique way of writing Melinda's story. She uses subtitles instead of chapters, nd goes into detail of Melinda's everyday life, by using Melinda's perspective. The author sets a depressed mood in the story because of what the main character has gone through. The central idea of the text is communication which in the beginning Melinda lacks. August before her freshman year, Melinda and her friends show up at a senior party. At the party, Melinda ends up drinking. Andy Evans takes advantage of her drunken state and rapes her. She is too drunk to defend herself. Afterward Melinda deals 911 and the police arrive at the party, but Melinda is unable to confess what happened. When the entire school knows that Melinda was the one who called the police, everyone, including her friends, stopped speaking to her. No one knew the real reason behind the 9-11 call. Throughout the school year she cuts her wrist, skips school, and fails her classes. Melinda goes through a tough time in high school. She has one friend (who later on in the book betrays her), a difficult family, and was a victim

“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

Have you ever felt like you were invisible? Well, Melinda from “Speak” has. The novel “Speak” by Laurie Halse Anderson is about a freshmen girl trying to find out who she is. At Merryweather High School, the constantly changing mascot symbolizes Melinda’s lack of identity. Melinda’s high school, Merryweather High, already changed their mascot the first day of school.

Numerous teenagers notice the beginning of high school to be a difficult as they encounter a new obstacle, when walking into a new atmosphere it is common to lose one’s confidence not knowing what lies ahead. Mixed emotions are dealt from a freshman, Melinda Sordino, as she struggles to develop due to no growth and lack of confidence Unable to face her experiences and seek for help from others, in the novel Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson. The text uses Similes to display how Melinda is feeling where she passively lacks confidence due to her trauma. The use of metaphors is to describe Melinda’s fear of facing the truth towards her suffering. Finally, the value of symbolism explains how she is dealing with her trauma by observing her trauma towards

Chris Rexroth 4th hour 11/16/14 Laurie Halse Anderson asserts, through the utilization of similes and symbolism in Speak, that in order to heal, we must forget the past. Throughout the whole story, Anderson made the most of symbolism to show that not forgetting the past hurts us. For example, while dissecting a frog in biology class, Melinda explains, “Our frog lies on her back.

Throughout this fragment of Speak, Laurie Halse Anderson portrays Melinda with an introvertive voice. Melinda is having a hard time warming up to her new high school. The excerpt starts off with Melinda trying to find a place to sit in the lunchroom. “There’s that new girl, Heather, reading by the window. I could sit across from her. Or I could crawl behind a trash can.” (Paragraph 2) Melinda would rarther hide and go unnoticed than interact with other students. This quote shows us that she’s willing to take great measures to avoid being observed. Another example of diction was when Melinda was seen without a hallway pass by Mr. Neck, and when she was asked to explain herself, she just thinks to herself: “It is easier to not say anything… Nobody

A great leader acquires many strong qualities but the most important quality a leader can possess is being able to inspire other. In the book Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, the main character, Melinda, is having some trouble with her art project. A girl named Ivy decided to take action and help Melinda out with her project. “You’re better than you think you are,” Ivy says. She opens to an empty page in the sketchbook. “I don’t know why you keep using a linoleum block. If I were you, I’d just let it out, draw. Here---try a tree. We sit there trading pencils,” (Anderson 146). Ivy wants to show that there are other ways to go about things. She understood that Melinda was stuck and wanted to inspire her by starting her off with drawing and helping along the way.

In the book Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson, Andy Evans impacted Melinda Sordino in a very negative way. Melinda was raped by Andy Evans at a party weeks before she started high school as a freshman. Melinda, who was scared and unsure, called the cops. But she was too horrified to say anything and ends up going home before they arrived. But the police do come and arrest people at the party.

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.

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

In speak the books shows the melinda should talk to someone and get help. Reading this books helps me have empathy on others who have bad things done to them. At the end of the first part of the book melinda's problems are causing her to get bullied and made fun of by many high school students, like the freshmen