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Character Analysis: Speak By Laurie Halse Anderson

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Imagine a girl, once happy and cared about, turn into a walking zombie. This is Melinda, she is starting her first day of school sitting alone and talking to no one. Her once best friends turned against her after a huge event during the summer leaving Melinda as a victim. In the book Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, Melinda is faced with multiple problems. These consist of high school, parents, not having friends, and the emotional scarring from her rape the previous summer. Throughout the whole story Melinda struggles to recognize herself. She shows symptoms of PTSD, which causes her to not speak out of fear. As the book moves along, Melinda gets assigned to put her identity in a tree for art. At first she is not crazy about this idea, but it begins to represent her and her growth in the long run. Towards the end of the book, Melinda has a run in with her rapist, Andy Evans. He threatens her and attempts to hurt her again, except this time Melinda works up the confidence to scream no, thanks to the wise words of David Petrakis, her lab partner. After the second incident, Melinda gets an overwhelming support from her peers. She …show more content…

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

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