What Is The Loss Of Innocence In Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak

In the book Speak by, Laurie Halse Anderson, the main character Melinda, tries to find her voice all throughout the book. Then she meets her art teacher Mr. Freeman. He helps her all throughout her school year express her and stand up for herself at the end of the year, when she has another problem with the same guy that hurt her before school started. Mr. Freeman helps Melinda express herself by getting better at speaking, expressing herself, and also standing up for herself. Melinda was finding her voice all throughout the school year.

Life is a struggle, especially in high school. There are different groups and different types of people. School is a challenge and getting through it is hard. For some, it is harder than others. In Laurie Halse Anderson's novel, Speak, the main character is a survivor of more than just high school.

In the young adult novel Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, the main character Melinda called the police at a high school party while going into freshman year. This unfairly made her instant an outcast and loner. Because of the rape, Melinda lost friends and interest in school and activities.

Speak Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Selective Mutism “I know my head isn’t screwed on straight. I want to leave, confess everything, hand over the guilt and mistake and anger to someone else. There is a beast in my gut, I can hear it scraping away at the inside of my ribs. Even if I dump the memory, it will stay with me, staining me” (Anderson 51).

In Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, Melinda struggles with communication. Melinda is at a party, she is attacked and raped by a student who attends her school, Merryweather high. When it is time to head back to school after the summer, Melinda decides not to talk to anyone. She became completely mute. In the beginning of the book, Melinda is thinking about her attack when her " throat squeezes shut...

In the novel Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson the author uses the ‘Tree’ motif to show that Melinda’s growth though the whole book because In the first quote, Melinda is using the tree to represent how she feels as if nobody can see her. In the second quote she shows how she feels out of place. In the third quote she talks about how with some improvement, the tree could be better. Just like how with some improvement she could be better. In the beginning of the novel, the motif of Tree represents how Melinda is develops as a human, deals with her rape and all its aftermath, and discovers who she is without other people to identify her, her trees also become more complex.

As a child goes through life, he/she acquires valuable lessons including the expression of oneself and the times in which silence is appropriate. Throughout adolescence, teenagers navigate through uncomfortable situations that teach them when to speak up and when to stay silent. In her novel Speak, Laurie Halse Anderson reflects on incidents that occurred in her life, connecting them to her story while incorporating issues that are prevalent today to advise readers to find their voice. Anderson‵s youth and own life struggles have significantly contributed to her novel. She was born on October 23, 1961 in Potsdam, New York (“Speak” 252).

Nelson Mandela has an exceptional point of view on courage, as he once said "Courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it." Like Mr. Mandela, Melinda Sordino in Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson also learned this throughout her time as a ninth grader. The character Melinda has many encounters that test her courage throughout the book. The first act of bravery that stood out to me was when Melinda put her emotion's into art.

Speak Essay “My head explodes with the noise of fire trucks leaving the station” (39). The book Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson shows Melinda being both courageous and having lack of courage. Melinda does go through some tough stages in the book, but is still shows courage sometimes. Some of her lack of courage does come from a traumatic experience at a party before her freshman year of high school. The first way Melinda shows lack of courage is at a party during the summer going into her first year of high school.

Laurie Halse Anderson’s historical fiction novel, Fever 1793 takes place in colonial Philadelphia, during the time of the yellow fever outbreak. Mattie Cook, a young girl during the outbreak has to cope with the many hardships brought onto her by the disease. While the fever brought many terrible things to Mattie and her family, she is able to move past them and build her life up again. By using character development and figurative language, Anderson is able to create the theme that good things can always come out of something bad. The theme that prevails throughout the novel Fever 1793 is that good things can always come out of something bad.

The novel, Speak, is about a girl named Melinda, who had an unfortunate incident befall her the summer leading into high school. Now, everyone dislikes her and Melinda spends the majority of the year hiding in the shadows trying to find a way to speak. Melinda befriends Heather, a new girl from Ohio. For a sizeable part of the book, Melinda and Heather linger with each other and therefore, the contrast between the two characters is unquestionably prominent. Heather has a bubbly, determined, and egocentric personality.

An Outcast’s Forest Everett Mamor once said, “We can learn a lot from trees: they're always grounded, but never stop reaching heavenward”(Mamor). In literature, trees can show many things, such as growth, change, and life. In the novel Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, trees are used to represent the main character Melinda and her struggles. Melinda is an outcast at school, shunned by her peers for calling the police on a party where she was raped. She is almost invisible at home, where her family communicates through sticky notes and avoids interacting with each other.

The purpose of symbolism in literature is to represent the turmoil and struggles of the characters which cannot directly conveyed. Laurie Halse Anderson’s novel Speak relies on these as a subtle method of characterization and a way of expressing the themes of the novel. These symbols in the story are plentiful and make parallels to Melinda’s feelings, fears, and character development, such as mirrors, the settings of the closet and art room, and trees. The presence of mirrors in the story represent Melinda’s self-confidence (or lack thereof) and the level of acceptance she has reached with herself. Early in the story she decides to hide the mirrors in her bedroom and closet at school as a way of hiding from herself.

The subject matter of change is integrated throughout the following chosen texts; The Art of Resilience by Hara Estroff Marano, Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, and The Third and Final Continent by Jhumpa Lahiri. The Art of Resilience focuses on changing to better your way of life. Along with the document of Hara Estroff Marano, Speak focuses on an extremely similar concept. However, The Third and Final Continent centers on the topic of learning to react and handle different types of change. The Art of Resilience, Speak, and The Third and Final Continent all maintain a common theme of change.