Speak

Speak.

By Laurie Halse Anderson

When I began this book, I knew nothing about it. I didn’t look up what it was supposed to be about or look up anything that the author had previously written, I just picked up the book and began reading it. At first I thought that the first few chapters/classes were very boring, I didn’t understand why I was reading a book about a teenage girl being depressed. Then as the story continued on I was beginning to get curious on why she was so depressed and why she exiled herself from the rest of her classmates. The first time that Laurie Anderson talked about a boy and called him IT, I knew exactly what this book was going to be about. On page 46 in the novel is the first time that we hear about IT. “I see IT in the hallway. IT goes to Merryweather. IT is walking with Aubrey Cheerleader. IT is in my nightmare and I cant wake up. IT sees me. IT smiles and winks. Good thing my lips are stitched together or I’d throw up” (Anderson). I feel that though this moment, though Melinda never says it in this chapter, we know that IT has raped her, or done something seriously harmful to her.

       I personally feel that the way that Anderson writes this book and though all the symbols that she uses, we actually know from that moment that he did rape her. There are so many signs in the book. She used to have friends, but she no longer does. She used to talk and be social, but no longer. She used to get good grades and was a good girl in school, but no longer. We know that she is the girl that called 911 at the party at the beginning of the year, but we haven’t been told why yet in the novel. Though the symbolism that Anderson uses in this book we can see that she is dead inside because of this trauma. In art class Melinda is supposed to be drawing a tree, but she can only ever make the tree look like it is dead. The tree symbolizes Melinda, Melinda is ‘dead’ so the tree is also. Its not until Melinda actually tells someone what happened to her, that she starts to become alive again. And in the end when she is holding the glass shard up to Andy Evans thought that she really is alive. She has confronted her nightmare and she can now speak openly about it.

       This novel is an excellent one to talk about in schools because it could show students how to speak up for them selves. Like we talked about in class today, one in four women have been raped in their lives and many of them do not know how to deal with that trauma. I feel like this book could show people how Melinda is dealing with this pain, and maybe it could help them through an ordeal that they are going though. This novel is also a great one because it shows the truths of the real world. Many people in high school don’t understand what's out there, they just know their little high school bubble, I know it didn’t know. 

       This novel is one of the best Young Adult novels I have read in a while, not only because it was entertaining, but because it told life how it really is. It shows the audience that, yes, you can move on after something very terrible has happened to you. You just need to confront your fears and life will go on. That is why this is a good novel for teenagers, it shows then that they can live through certain things in their lives. They do not have to just die inside, like Melinda did in the beginning, they can move past it and begin to grow.