Speak Without Spoken Language Analysis

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson was a great journey from start to finish. This realistic fiction book is about Melinda Sordino, a student entering her first year of high school. She struggles trying to find new friends as her old friends leave her or move on to other groups and clans. Although the title is Speak, Melinda is actually mute. The majority of the book is Melinda’s narration and thoughts about the events happening over the course of her freshman year. She rarely talks and never communicates verbally to anyone. This is all because of an incident that happened at the end of eighth grade.

Metaphors in ‘Speak’ show that Melinda’s past peers unintentionally destroy her self-respect, resulting in a feeling of dread engulfing Melinda, her. Thus, Some individuals tend to jump to conclusions without thinking about others .On her first day of high school, the entire ninth grade population holds a grudge against Melinda for calling the cops at a summer party without knowing it was because she was raped. During her lunchtime, Melinda “stand[s] in the centre aisle of the auditorium” as if she is “a wounded zebra in a National Geographic special, looking for someone, anyone, to sit next to.” (Anderson 5). Melinda, standing surrounded with hundreds of people, yet still alone, shows that she has no support from anyone. Melinda is hurt so strongly by others rude attitude towards her to the point she feels as if she has been physically wounded, even hunted, by the students from her school. Melinda is seen as if she betrayed her peers by calling the police, lowering her certainty along with her self-esteem, which interrupts her mental ageing process. She is instantly blamed which results in a lack of support, as well as company to start high school. In addition, Melinda views herself as a broken girl who cannot figure out her own life. One night, she is forced to go shopping for new clothes with her mother. In the change room, Melinda carefully studies herself in the mirror. Her self- belief is too low,

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.

Melinda isn't speaking to anyone, and no one will talk to her, except the new girl, Heather, who moved from the state of Ohio. Realistically, Heather being the new girl just wants to make friends. Heather doesn't know what is really going on with Melinda because she just moved to town. Heather has no idea what happened the night when Melinda called the police, which busted a summer party. In fact, no one knows, except for Melinda, what happened to her at the party? She is convinced that because she is a victim, no one understands her. The whole world, including her world, is out to get her and so it is best for her to remain silent.

This quote show that Melinda is an outcast, “ I have no friends. I have nothing to say. I say nothing" (Anderson 116). This quote shows that Melinda is insecure because, while Melinda is in the guidance counselor's office, her counselor is telling her that she’s been failing her classes and Melinda feels insecure. She feels out of place in the environment. Melinda is self-conscious that she feels she has to try to be pretty in order to gain her popularity back. Since Melinda has lost some friends coming into high school, she’s been feeling down on herself and depressed. Also, Melinda shows that she is insecure by saying, “ I am an outcast “( 8 Anderson). This proves that Melinda is insecure because before the start of High School Melinda was a very popular girl which is now an outcast. Until things went wrong for Melinda and she called the cops. Melinda had called the cops because she had been raped when she was drunk, so her first response was to call the cops. The cops had shown up, making everyone leave the party because of underage drinking and everyone knows Melinda has called the cops. Since that has happened she feels insecure by being an outcast. Because of this Melinda no longer is popular nor has no friends. Melinda feels she is insecure because she’s an outcast and has no friends which these feelings lead

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

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

Everyone has hardships that they come across, but what really matters is the way they overcome them. In the book “Speak” by Laurie Halse Anderson, the main character Melinda Sordino does not try to face her hardships, she wants her problems to just disappear, but what makes her different is that she learns that saying nothing will just make her problems worse. The author characterized Melinda as very brave, although it took time for her to accept her problems. Melinda tries to admit what happened to her, deal with the bullies in her school, and tries to help her ex-best friend, Rachel to see with whom she is dealing with.

In the book Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, the author does something out of place or that the character wouldn’t do and it brings the book to a whole other level. The main character is Melinda and she has a hard time in highschool. She doesn’t have any friends and most of her teachers don’t like her. Also her and her parents don’t really talk to each other. They don’t have a connection with her like some parents have with their kids. So just from this you can kind of tell that Melinda of has no hope inside of her.

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

In the novel Speak, the author uses the protagonist, Melinda, to teach the reader the importance of verbal expression. Melinda refuses to speak up about an event that occurred in her life; therefore her classmates cannot show empathy towards her. Melinda never spoke up about why she did what she had done during an event in her life, so people judge and bully Melinda for her decisions. Melinda’s silence slowly erodes her self esteem and leaves her alone to handle her depressive behavior and decisions.

Melinda Sordino is the main character of the novel, speak. She is only fourteen years old, but she is dealing with one of the worst things that could happen: rape. With that Melinda enters ninth grade friendless and depressed. At the beginning of the story, Melinda is isolated. Throughout the story, she befriends some characters and learns how to speak. In speak due to the perspective, we don't get enough depth in a character. However, when hearing about Andy Evans, Melinda's rapist, from the beginning to the end of the story he was always arrogant and intimidating. Although Melinda does not defend herself against it, she often stays quiet.

Melinda was completely alone in her situation because nobody knew what happened to her at the party. She refused to speak to anyone and did not let anyone

As the protagonist, Melinda, develops with her communication skills, she also delves into interactions with other characters. While there are many characters in Speak, the main focus shall be on Mr. Freeman, Heather, Rachel/Rachelle, and Andy Evans due to their significant roles in the plot of Speak. Mr. Freeman is the art teacher at Merryweather High and as such he has a student-teacher relationship with Melinda. It should be noted that Mr. Freeman is the only teacher Melinda seems to respect as she refers to her social studies teacher as Mr. Neck and her English teacher as Hairwoman. This is because Mr. Freeman inspires her to use art to express her emotions through art, a subject she already likes very much. Art is what helps Melina both express and deal with her difficult emotions

In the novel speak the author uses the protagonist, Melinda, to teach the reader the importance of verbal expression. One way she gets this across is how Melinda refuses to speak about an event that occurred in her life; therefore her classmates cannot show empathy toward her. Another is how she keeps her feelings inside by not speaking to others and then having them manifest in self harming ways. The author also uses how Melinda doesn’t talk about things in her life and how that leads to people turning against her.