Speak
Laurie Halse Anderson
Summary
Speak tells the story of Melinda Sordino a ninth grader at Merryweather High School in Syracuse, New York. She arrives friendless on her first day of ninth grade and receives angry glares from strangers. She decides that speaking only hurts her, and remains mostly silent. Melinda slips into depression and her grades suffer. "I just want to sleep. The whole point of not talking about it, of silencing the memory, is to make it go away. It won't. I'll need brain surgery to cut it out of my head." (Anderson, 81) She finds an abandoned janitor's closet and makes it her sanctuary. She begins to admit to herself what happened and gradually stops running away from the memory of it. She still, however, remains silent..The following week, Melinda decides she is ready to move out of her janitor's closet. She no longer feels like hiding. While cleaning it out, however, Andy enters and locks her in the room with him. Angry that she talked to Rachel, Andy attempts to rape Melinda a second time. This time, however, Melinda screams and fights back. The lacrosse team hears Melinda's cries and rescues her from Andy. By the next day, everyone knows Andy and Melinda's history. Melinda's popularity goes up by a lot because of this incident. Melinda sits in Mr. Freeman's room on the final day of school finishing up her yearlong art project. After she turns it in, Mr. Freeman gives her an A+. He says that he knows she has been through a lot. Prompted by this statement, Melinda decides to tell Mr. Freeman her entire story.
Character Analysis
In the beginning, Melinda is a girl who keeps to herself, and is afraid to speak. That causes her to fall into a depression, and her grades start to suffer, her parents weren't very fond of that. Over the course of the year however that changes. "I know my head isn't screwed on straight. I want to leave, transfer, warp myself into another galaxy" (Anderson, 51)
Conflict and Resolution
The type of conflict Melinda faced would be character vs. character. I say this because this all started when Andy raped her, that's when she went silent. Until the day she told Rachel about what had happened. "If there is anyone in this entire galaxy I am dying to tell what happened, It's Rachel"
Theme
Friendship is a tender and brutal thing in Speak. When Melinda loses all her friends at a party just before she starts high school due to a grave misunderstanding, she's forced to rethink the value of friendship. "Up until this very instant, I had never "The kids behind me laugh so loud, I know they're laughing about me"
Textual Evidence
"But you got it wrong. The suffragettes were all about speaking up, screaming for their rights. You can't speak up for your right to be silent. That's letting the bad guys win."
I thought this was the most meaningful quote because, it's what he books really about and it brings out the true meaning of the book
Book Review
I would give this book a 3.5 out of 5. I would give it this because this book has something almost everyone can agree with out has lived through. It also has a very good overall theme and doesn't get boring. It's an easy read, but you once you start you aren't gonna want to put it down.
Speak movie Trailer 2004 HD Kristen Stewart
Anderson, Laurie Halse. Speak. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1999. Print.
"Speak." Goodreads. Web. 13 May 2016.
"Speak Movie Trailer 2004 HD Kristen Stewart." YouTube. YouTube, 14 Dec. 2014. Web. 13 May 2016.
"Redirect Notice." Redirect Notice. Web. 13 May 2016.