Melinda's Growth In Speak By Laurie Halse Anderson

“It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you're not.” (Andre Gide) In the book Speak By: Laurie Halse Anderson the main character Melinda calls the cops at a party over the summer. When school starts Melinda as a freshman is hated for stopping the party. What they don’t know is why Melinda called the cops. Melinda has to overcome the past and learn from her fears to thrive. In the book the tree symbolizes Melinda's growth, to overcome fears and to progress you need to learn from the past. To start, the journey of Melinda’s growth she chooses a topic for her art class that she will be working on all year. When Melinda pulls her topic out she is disappointed. “I plunge my hand into the bottom of the globe and fish out my paper. "Tree." Tree? It's too easy. I learned how to draw a tree in second grade.” (12). After this Melinda tries to pull out a different piece of paper but, Mr. Freeman (Melinda's art teacher) pulls the globe away not allowing Melinda to choose again. Some of the biggest problems in our life seem easy and like no big deal in the beginning but become hard trials in our life later on. Melinda saying her tree is to easy is refusing to let herself grow and

During the time that Melinda is working on her artwork she has been talking to old friends trying to fix her relationships. “My last tree looked like it had died from some fungal infection - not the effect I wanted at all.”(92). Melinda is already starting to grow in many ways, in her artwork, and her personal life. Her artwork is improving and she is learning to make her tree have meaning behind it. In her life Melinda is trying to make new friends and is trying to figure out how to tell people what happened to her at the party and why she called the cops. This relates to the theme because Melinda is facing her fears and she is starting to