Summary Of Speak By Laurie Halse Anderson

Melinda isn't speaking to anyone, and no one will talk to her, except the new girl, Heather, who moved from the state of Ohio. Realistically, Heather being the new girl just wants to make friends. Heather doesn't know what is really going on with Melinda because she just moved to town. Heather has no idea what happened the night when Melinda called the police, which busted a summer party. In fact, no one knows, except for Melinda, what happened to her at the party? She is convinced that because she is a victim, no one understands her. The whole world, including her world, is out to get her and so it is best for her to remain silent.

Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson, is a story written in the first person about a young girl named Melinda Sordino. The title of the book, Speak, is ironically based on the fact that Melinda chooses not to speak. The book is written in the form of a monologue in the mind of Melinda, a teenage introvert. This story depicts the story of a very miserable freshman year of high school. Although there are several people in her high school, Melinda secludes herself from them all. There are several people in her school that used to be her friend in middle school, but not anymore. Not after what she did over the summer. What she did was call the cops on an end of summer party on of her friends was throwing. Although

Speaking out is a tough task for many people that have dealt with horrible, traumatic situations. In the novel Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson, the main character, Melinda, is one of those people who lost their voice. To be able to understand another person’s emotions, feelings, and situations is very difficult to do, especially because of how our society has formed and became a very judgmental place. Melinda Sordino starts her freshman year at Merryweather High School in Syracuse, New York, to a terrible start; she is a victim of a sexual assault and loses her confidents and voice to speak out. The more she interacts and makes new friends is how she starts to reach out and become more self-sufficient. Few weeks into school Melinda’s only

The novel Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson, features a fourteen year old girl named Melinda Sordino who lives in Syracuse, New York. The novel takes place close to present day, with the book being written in 1999, which is when the novel was written. Melinda comes from a middle class background and her parents are blue collar workers. Her mother works at a department store at the local mall while her father works in an office building. Both of her parents spend a lot of time at work and Melinda is an only child, which means she spends most of her time alone. The story begins with Melinda entering high school in her freshman year. The summer after eighth grade, Melinda and her friends attended a high school party. At the party, Melinda is assaulted

Melinda Sordino is a fourteen year old high school freshman from Syracuse, New York .Mel is the narrator and protagonist of Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson. Who tells her story in first person perspective, where she explains the struggles she had starting school after being sexually assaulted over summer vacation. Causing depression, which lead to Mel losing a close friend. After reading the novel, I concluded that Melinda is shy, isolated and misunderstood. . As the plot progressed Mel started to trust her teachers, she also started expressing herself.

In the book“Speak” by Laurie Halse Anderson, the main character is “Melinda Sordino who is a freshmen in highschool that is having tough times fitting in after she called the cops on a party she was in and now almost everyone hates her, but then along the way she finds some friends who help her out. The message of this story is that no matter what you do you can always come through and defeat your fears of high school.

In the book Speak Laurie Halse Anderson is saying that in our daily lives friends are great to have, but you can’t depend on them always being there for you. Such as when Laurie Halse Anderson wrote about Melinda and her new friend Heather. Heather was fun at first but then backed stabbed Melinda later. Laurie Anderson wrote about Melinda’s friends leaving her after Melinda called the cops at the party because she was raped. Her friends didn’t bother asking why she did, they just stopped talking to her. Laurie Halse Anderson wrote about Melinda hiding and not opening up to anyone. Now this was where I was saying that Laurie Anderson was writing about it’s good to have a friends around. If Melinda had just one friend to talk to she wouldn’t

Heather tells Melinda that they can’t be friends anymore and Melinda gets mad because she feels like she is the one who took Heather under wing since she was brand new to the area and didn’t know anyone. Now Heather goes to sit with “The Martha” group and Melinda is left to sit by herself at lunch every day. Melinda starts getting depressed that she has nobody to talk to and she starts skipping class and getting bad grades, her parents and teachers notice this new change in her but think she is just trying to get attention from them so they just sort of ignore it but her art teacher doesn’t and encourages her to speak and show her expressions through her artwork. Melinda then becomes friends with a guy names David Petrakis who is her lab partner in science and he is pushes Melinda to speak up. A little while later Melinda sees her old friend from middle school, Rachel start dating Andy Evans, the boy who raped her and she wants to worn her but doesn’t want to speak so she tells her by passing notes to her while they are in the

Just before school ended, she started communicating with her lab partner and friend, David Petrakis. She also met Ivy, a kind girl in her art class. As Melinda finally met people that she felt comfortable and happy around, she gained confidence. Her teachers and parents were pleased to discover that this also improved Melinda’s attendance and grades. Melinda finally opened her mind enough to think through the events of the party. She had blamed herself the whole time, just like the rest of the school. As Andy pointed out, Melinda never explicitly told him, “ no” during her rape. She thought it was wimpy that she called the cops. She let her friends and peers convince her that she was an idiot and a wimp. Melinda eventually allowed herself to figure out that she was a victim. She never gave permission to Andy, and she was right to call the police because she was in pain and in danger. Once Melinda opened up and let herself and others in, she was able to defend herself. Melinda proved her confidence and power when she told Andy, “No!” when he tried to attack her in her closet. With Melinda’s new found confidence, she was able to drastically improve her life and save herself from her

Laurie Halse Anderson shows the reader COURAGE is a theme in ‘Speak’ because on page 9 MELINDA got smacked in the chest with potatoes and tries to storm out when she is stopped by a teacher (MR.NECK) who won't let her out because she is too afraid to tell him what she was doing. She needed COURAGE. Another theme is FEAR, MELINDA has/had a fear of speaking, about anything, about what happened. This is shown on page 97 and 9 when instead of talking and confronting Melinda just runs away; in both situations. On page 97 Melinda runs away from Andy when he offers her a bite of a jelly doughnut (tauntingly and creepily not as a friend).

In our novel Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson, multiple settings are present. The overall setting is in a school called Merryweather High School in a small town. The main character, Melinda, describes her first day there, “we pass janitors painting over the sign...school colors will stay purple and gray…”(3, 4). The school mascot was the Trojans, but the janitors were painting over the sign because the mascot was changing. In the school, the overall mood is dark and angry. Melinda called the police to a party, and now she is a social outcast, therefore school is not a good place for her. However, there are a couple places inside the school that she feels better in. There is her art classroom, which is at the opposite end of the school, “The

The character Melinda of Laurie Halse Anderson’s novel Speak develop the theme of change throughout the story through her actions, words, and thoughts. First, in the beginning of the novel, Melinda was more isolated than the others because she chose not to communicate with anybody about her conflict and refused to talk to anybody, not even her parents. “One girl nods her head and says way to go. I hope you are okay” (Anderson 197). Melinda never communicated with anybody, verbally. In the end, when she screamed when she was being abused, her conflict was resolved. Because she chose to communicate, she also became quite popular throughout her school. Then, Melinda always thought about how terrible school is. “With hours left in the school year,

Constantly stated, is the idea that high school is one of the best times of life. Parties, friends, and endless days of fun is the American stereotype. These dreams dissipate, though, if you start freshman year with a record of zero friends. In the young adolescent novel titled Speak, written by Laurie Halse Anderson, the reader encounters the feeling to lack the most powerful tool ever given to you: the tool of words. Melinda’s endeavor commence after an end of summer senior party, where she was cruelly raped. Rather than sharing her pain with the world, and achieving justice, she chose to keep her secret locked up, because she did not know how to reveal it. Speaking out would have dramatically changed her life for the better. The main theme

In the novel Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, the main protagonist Melinda is faced with many conflicts against society, and against herself. Anderson is able to develop the theme of communication or lack thereof through her use of symbolism, and motifs throughout the novel. There are many themes that occur throughout the novel, however the theme of communication can be prominently seen through the challenges Melinda faces in her everyday to day school life. Melinda’s communication is mostly non verbal as can be seen in the novel. A motif that occurs throughout the novel is Melinda’s self conflict with biting her lips. Melinda’s anxiousness can be seen when she is put in a situation to speak and she constantly picks on her lips until they start

In the novel Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, Melinda Sordino starts her freshman year of high school with a secret. At an end of summer party Melinda and her friends went to she ended up calling the cops, so now her old friends won’t talk to her, and people she doesn't know hate her from a distance. Melinda’s only friend is a new student, Heather who ends up trying to gain