Summary Of Speak By Laurie Halse Anderson

Something had happened during that summer party that made her want to end her silence and speak up. During the summer, Melinda got raped by a senior boy called Andy Evans. Whom she

Starting her Freshman year of High School, Melinda found herself in a very dark, low, depressing, time in her life. She had lost all the ambitions she had for her High School career. She had lost her voice and passion for everything. Until Andy Evans made her find her voice after he sexually assaulted her. After all that Andy had put Melinda through made her find herself and her voice to come back from a traumatizing experience.

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

Throughout the story, Melinda shows many signs of depression. Teens will often display changes in their thinking and behavior, lose their motivation, or become withdrawn. Psych Info Online presented some signs of depression that Melinda experienced in the novel. The signs Melinda indicated include: sadness, anxiety, feelings of hopelessness, withdrawal from friends, decreased interest of activities, social isolation, poor communication, low self-esteem, guilt, and

It does not let her feels and looks so stupid. After Heather joins in the Marthas, she blows Melinda off and Melinda is outcast again. The students hit Melinda in the hall; the girls' bully her at the pep rally all shows Melinda is an outcast, she is unwelcome. Melinda is a coward. "The kids behind me laugh so loud I know they're laughing at me. I can't help myself '' (Anderson 4). Melinda is a timid person. She scareds to tell the truth of that night, thus her friends cannot understand her difficulties. About the event happen at the party, she chooses to escape her past and become silent. Melinda does not talk a lot, either at school or at home to her parents. She acts like she does not care and hid from everyone. When someone bullies her, she just ignores them and suppresses her true feelings. Melinda is also a negative person. '' It is easier not to say anything. Shut your trap, button your lip, can it. All that crap you hear on TV about communication and expressing feelings is a lie'' (Anderson 9). From this quotation, it is evident to see Melinda is negative. Her thinking is negative and

Her consequence was to go to MISS (Merryweather in School Suspension). “Andy Beast” is in MISS with Melinda. “I am BunnyRabbit again, hiding in the open. I sit like I have an egg in my mouth. One move, one word, and the egg will shatter and blow up the world” (Anderson 117). Which makes her feel uncomfortable and will not speak. Not talking in MISS creates a situation where Melinda must take increased mental torture from Andy Evans. She sits by the man who sexually assaulted her.In addition, more and more into the school year she is beginning to speak, but she isn’t quite fully there yet. When Heather tells Melinda that she isn’t fun and is very boring and depressed, Melinda realizes that she isn’t at all fun. David, her lab partner, start to talk throughout the school year and Melinda starts to feel more and more comfortable with him. “I ask David Petrakis for advice. We come up with a Plan” (Anderson 155). Melinda asked David for advice because she needed to present a project in front of the class, which Melinda is terrified of doing. So they come up with a plan and it helps Melinda communicate with other which is a wonderful thing for her; but the terrible part this presentation got her sent to

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

Self) She sees herself as an outcast. the internal conflict of Melinda Sordino I that she was raped and does not tell anyone about it, causing her to become depressed. Her parents realize that she acts differently at home, but Melinda does not tell the reason why. In the story, Melinda fears a guy named "IT", who we later on know as Andy Evans. And teases her in the story for example on page 97 he hands Melinda a donut saying, "What a bite?". He is obviously teasing her and Melinda makes it noticeable that she fears him by running away. The authors purpose is to show that Andy is the reason for Melinda's depression. She expresses this by having Melinda call Andy

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

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

During this time in the novel, Melinda feels like she can’t speak for herself and can’t tell people what really happened and why she had called the cops at the party. She feels that if she tells anyone that they would say that she’s just trying to get attention. Those examples were just a few times out of the many that they changed the

On page 188, something in Melinda takes her to the barn where she was raped. She must be very courageous to do this, anyone would have to be brave to. When she is there she realizes that none of this was her fault, she survived, and she is still here. She realizes that something inside of her is still good, she starts to forgive herself. She somehow finds that little part inside of her that is happy, and she lets it grow. “Some quiet Melindagirl I haven’t seen in months. That is the seed I will care for.”(Anderson 188-189). She has the courage to go back there, and forgive

In her mind, Melinda tells the girl that there's more to the story than she knows. But, Melinda can't tell everybody the real story, in fact, she can't even look at that part of herself. Heather seems that she should defend Melinda, but she doesn't do it as It might keep her from gaining popularity. Things get noisy, Melinda's head is in her hands and she screams, but nobody can hear her. On the contrary, there is one man that treats her correctly and that man is Mr. Freeman.

On page 194 the author writes, “A sounds explodes from me...NNNOOO!!!” This is significant because throughout the whole book Melinda is too afraid to speak up. During the first incident she tried to but couldn’t get it out. Now that she finally realized that she’s is strong enough to say no, she can learn to speak up about anything. Another quote to support this is found on page 195 where Melinda says “‘I said no’” (195). This significant to her identity for the same reason as stated before. Melinda saying no can be considered to be a turning point in Melinda’s life because it is something she couldn’t do for a long time but now she is capable. This moment is the most important for Melinda and her identity because she finally worked up the confidence to say

Page 161: This question makes me wonder why Melinda’s rapist keeps agonizing her. It’s sick that he feels no remorse to what he did, he almost seem like a sociopath. I wonder if Andy (the rapist) told