Images And Descriptions In Speak By Laurie Halse Anderson

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

In the novel Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, Melinda a young incoming freashman starts off high school depressed and avoided by her classmates and friends. Over the summer Melinda attends a party where she has no choice but to call the police, resulting in all her friends to dismiss and turn against her completely including her best friend Rachel. When Melinda begins high school detached from all of her classmates she tries to befriend Heather, a new student who is unaware of the party conflict. “...we kind of paired up at the beginging of the year when I was new and didnt know anyone and that was really sweet of you but I think its time for the both of us to admit that we...just...are...very...differnt” (105 Anderson) Heather soon realizes

The fact that she “can’t bring it to life” shows her depression and sadness. In one section of the book, a tree cutter comes to Melinda’s house to cut the dead branches off a tree. “By cutting off the damage, you make it possible for the tree to grow again (pg.187).” Melinda “cut off her damage” when she didn’t want Heather as her friend and stood

In the book Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson there are many examples of symbolism. Symbolism is a symbolic meaning attributed to natural objects or facts. Melinda in the book had her tree and that showed how she felt and the seasons changing showed how she was changing as a person. There was also the Maya Angelou poster she put up in the closet in school.

So she and her father started pruning the tree which is the process of cutting off all the old rotted branches that the tree does not need. ”He is saving it Those branches were long dead from disease All plants are like that By cutting off the damage you make it possible for the tree to grow again” The process of her and her father's pruning shows how she is trying to cut off all the bad and rotten things about her. She is trying to better herself and be confident in herself. Trees are symbolic and many different ways, this book is one of them.

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

The book Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson Is full of symbols that connect to the real world. Symbolism is important when writing a book because it helps the reader connect and relate to the main character easier and gives the reader a better view of what the main character is or may be going threw.

At first she tries her hardest to make it look like a tree but it never comes out to look like a good one. The art teacher had said “you will spend the rest of the year learning how to turn your object into a piece of art” (12,Anderson) which means the object is going to be growing like how Melinda is growing by the end of the year. Her growth is shown through this tree as she continues to redraw it and gets better at drawing towards the end of the story. The tree is a symbol of Melinda getting stronger and becoming able to communicate her

Melinda was an outcast and loner in high school who was overwhelmed, fearful, and confused with her life and her environment at school. She was always silent in class and afraid to speak in front of people. Many students today might feel the need to fit in with other people so they wouldn’t have to be looked down upon. As we take a look at Melinda’s life we’ll be able to see how she handles her daily conflicts. In the book, Speak, Melinda Sordino, an incoming freshman at Merryweather High, starts her year off with a terrible start. She’s stuck with a mean history teacher, by who she calls Mr. Neck and a whole bunch of other weird teachers like her English teacher of who she calls, Hairwomen, because of her crazy, uncombed

Instead of just drawing a tree, Melinda adds color. “ For a solid week I’ve been painting watercolors of trees that have been hit by lightning” (p.30). Melinda improves by adding color, but she still made a sarcastic comment because she isn’t confident. Another way she showed growth is she was creative and made a memorial for the bird she lost on thanksgiving and relates it with trees. “ I want to glue the bones together in a heap like firewood, get it?

Appearance has a massive amount of importance in today's society, and that brings on a magnificent amount of insecurity in today's youth. What people see and how they react to their reflection in a mirror will vary. How someone views oneself is a very important subject to that person's state of mind, this can lead to a person being confident or being very insecure. In the novel Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, the mirrors display Melinda's frustrations towards herself, such as a negative appearance. On page 37 you can almost feel her negative reaction from her reflection. “Seeing her reflection in the window, she was struck dumb her face is streaked with tears. (36)”

In the book “Speak” by Laurie Halse Anderson Melinda is going through a transformation, by explaining it in a form of trees. She is expressing herself not much by the form of speaking, but by the trees she creates in art class. It’s to explain on how she has been at her lowest and highest points in times. She faces all these transformations as from past events and future events in her high school. The majority of these events relate to her tree transformation from lowest to highest points.

Moreover, this drawing of the tree is representative of the mind growth of Melinda. For instance, the drawing was poorly drawn at the beginning of the book, Melinda’s pressure and her life were weighing her down. As the drawing got better throughout the school year, Melinda’s strength and mindset also began to get better as well. If the tree meant “to shelter”, then Melinda sure developed a very nice shelter for herself in the end.

The tree in Speak symbolizes Melinda’s emotional state when at first she finds no meaning in drawing the tree then she finds the courage to speak up about her rape experience. As Melinda is starting her artistic path, Mr. Freeman says his opinion on her artwork and she develops an understanding that her art work could compare to her life.

When Melinda draws the word tree she says “Tree? It’s too easy” (Anderson, p.12). Melinda thought that making an art project of a tree that had emotion would be easy. She came to find out that it was harder than she had expected. After a week of trying to create her tree out of watercolors, Melinda creates trees that have been hit by lightning. She tries to “paint them so they are nearly dead, but not totally” (Anderson, pp.30-31). This statement reflects how Melinda feels towards life. After she was raped, she felt as if she was dead. She had no one to confide in and all her friends, and even people who were not her friends, were angry with her for calling the cops. She did not have the courage to tell them the reason she called the cops, because she feared they would no longer think of her the same way. Because of this, Melinda lived a lonely life with no one to talk to. She was not completely dead, but was not living her life to the fullest either. The trees she painted with watercolor are a representation of how she sees her