Speak
By: Laurie Halse Anderson
Summary
In the book "Speak" Melinda Sordino, A girl living in New York attending Merryweather High School attends a summer party that her friends were invited to. Its a senior party, and everyone is drinking. During the party Melinda meets a boy named Andy and he ends up raping her. She calls the cops and all they do is shut down the party. Melinda keeps the party a secrete and everyone thinks she called the cops to shut down the party. All of Melinda's friends hate her and make fun of her. A girl from Ohio named Heather becomes friends with Melinda until she starts to get embarrassed with being by Melinda. She ends up loosing her and only having her art class. Her parents don't care about her condition and neither does her school. At the end of the book Andy tries to rape Melinda again and ends up getting caught by a lacrosse team.
Character analysis
Melina Sordino- Melinda is a freshmen at Merryweather High School. She only had a small group of friends and didn't care about anything. She is stuck up and keeps everything to herself. She doesn't tell her friends what really happened and doesn't speak up. Andy, the guy who raped her ends up stalking her ex-best friend and Melinda does do anything about it. "It is easier not to say anything." "nobody wants to hear what you have to say."
Conflict/ Resolution
character vs self
Conflict- The problem Melinda was having with her self is, whether or not she should tell someone her secret or keep it to herself like she has been doing. She doesn't know what to do because if she tells someone she is scared that they might not believe her.
Resolution- After Melinda is attack for the second time she decides that she needs to tell someone. After that she begins to start talking a little bit more.
Theme
The theme is to speak up for yourself. Throughout the book Melinda gets stepped all over and bullied and never says anything to anyone. When Melinda actually says something Andy ends up getting caught trying to rape her again.
Textual evidance
This book is very powerful but the points are hard to understand. One of the points are that maybe if you keep your mouth shut up and shut people out everything will stop happening. Well usually that never works and it gets worse until the person being stuck up ends up killing there self. Maybe if she spoke up in the first place she would have never been in the janitors closet almost getting raped again.
Book review
I would give this book a 1 because it was very confusing. It would jump from school, to home, to the office, then to home in only one chapter. I got the theme and the point of the book, but i will never read this book again.
Overthinking
Melidna acts like she overthinks everything. Like when she lost Heather, she over thought the outcome of the fight and ended up not saying anything and Heather left her.
always sad
She always seems like something abd is happening and is never happy. She acts like being sad is her 'happy'.
Two faced
She never speaks up and acts like she is happy around people at school, but then sits in room and listens to music and cries herself to sleep.
Sexual Assault Awareness Month