...author, Laurie Halse Anderson, understands and remembers the crude emotions and unrest that makes up a teen’s world. This happens to be the most realistic fiction story on the battles of adolescence and harassment. Melinda does not turn into a racist activist Wonder Woman (even though she might when she is older) portrayed in some movies and her recovery is not sugar coated, it describes the true struggles. Even though this novel is based on sexual harassment it also focuses on the thoughts and feelings of a victim of the cruelties in high school. Rape and harassment are not issues I have dealt with but the shunning by friends, weird teachers, and oblivious teachers are problems that I and many others can relate to. For instance, the description of the Sordino family’s communication system on page 14 depicts how some teens get cut of from communication with their parents. The author of Speak portrays high school to be truly what it really is. “I am clanless.”(4) Melinda thinks just what practically all teens think. I am part of no clan; I don’t think FFCA has clans but you still fell “uncool” or not popular. Melinda also talks a lot about how no one cares what you have to say and in reality, that is the comprehension countless teens have about adults. Laurie Halse Anderson did a dead-on illustration of a ninth graders’ day to day life in the dog eat weaker dog world we call high school. Creativity and symbolism in writing are abundant in this story. Ms Anderson cleverly breaks...
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...tell the audience. Filmmakers use props, lighting, and facial expressions, while authors use symbolism to convey subliminal messages. One of many novels that uses symbolism effectively is Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson Throughout the novel, Anderson employs symbolism using...
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...friend Cassie swore to become the skinniest girls in school. This evolved into an obsession by both girls, causing problems not only for friends and family, but for themselves as well. Cassie’s death haunts Lia throughout the story and seeks literally as well as figuratively. In Winter Girls, by Laurie Halse Anderson, Lia Overbrook demonstrates her addiction to weight loss as a way to cope with her mental instability by concealing her weight and making reckless decisions. Lia’s craze for extreme weight loss leads her to mental breakdowns in her life. Lia expresses her mind versus body conflict with her thinking she could “gnaw off [her] right hand (Anderson 27).” Lia’s eagerness for a decent meal becomes uncontrollable at times. However, she refuses to eat in fear that she will gain fat. Even as a youthful individual Lia’s contemplations and fears about gaining weight had been engraved into her brain. Her anxiety and despair constantly damages her sense of awareness to the point where her life is in danger. Lia’s self-reasoning and insecurities about gaining weight drives her to having a negative connotation about food, “You eat and are punished in the same bite (Anderson 31).” To Lia, food is endless calories that lead to a life of obesity and problems. Food is portrayed as a toxic monster ready to kill her whereas in reality, food is not detrimental. Throughout the story, Lia denies help leading her to having a mental break down and a wrong outlook toward life. Lia fails...
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...Loyalty, the quality of being loyal to someone or something, a personal belief or thing you choose to put your effort in, or someone you choose to believe in. Chains, takes place in 1776 two sisters, Isabel and Ruth are torn from their only family and are forced to take care of themselves in an abusive home, where they are enslaved and forced to obey their owner’s rules and directions. I will mostly focus on the examples in which the characters are showing loyalty to others and how it affects theirs and other’s lives. I’m hoping that my essay proves that the Author was trying to show that people show loyalty in different ways. And what loyalty is to different kinds of people. Laurie Halse Anderson is showing in Chains that different people show loyalty and different ways and what loyalty means to the characters in her story. My point in my first body paragraph is to prove why Isabel...
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...In the book Speak, a girl named Melinda Sordino, was a victim of rape her freshman year of high school. She gradually gets stronger throughout the book and finally accepts that she can’t change what happens and moves on. Clearly being a victim of rape can affect the way you feel emotionally and physically. Melinda was so depressed about being raped that she stopped worrying about her appearance, and lost interest in all things. Melinda got to the point where she just stopped washing her hair and caring about how she looked because she felt that everyone hated her anyways. She would come home everyday and lock herself in her bedroom, because the depression would get the best of her. Melinda was scared to let anyone know what had happened to her, because she felt as if she would be looked at in a weird way. She held so much inside just because she felt that people would just hate her even more than they already did. People should never make fun of someone because of the way they are, because you never know how their home life is or what had happened to them. Melinda felt like the world was out to get her and that she would never be able to move on after being raped her freshman year of highschool. Melinda did not want to tell anyone what happened, because she felt like no one would believe her. Melinda held so much in just because she was scared and did not understand that it was okay to tell her mom and dad. She felt that she was going to be looked down on like she was trash...
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...Melinda: A PTSD Life “The conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of psychological trauma”(Judith Lewis Herman). Laurie Halse Anderson wrote Speak as a way to symbolize the trauma that a person goes through after a tragic accident. Not only did she just write about it, Anderson’s father was a veteran who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. Anderson writes about Melinda’s ptsd as evidenced by her display of the three classic symptoms: flashbacks, hyperarousal, and emotional numbness. Melinda's flashbacks are apparent throughout the book. Many times she delves into the recesses of her mind to relive the event that scarred her. An example of this is when she cannot...
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...Luther King once said, “ our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” Laurie Halse Anderson an American novelist made sure to make this point true in her book Speak. Melinda Sordino (the main character) was conflicted between telling her story about being raped or not. The night that it happened she was at a party with her friends. After she was raped she called the cops out of fear and confusion, but no one knew the reason why she did it. The day after nobody liked or talked to her, not even her best friend Rachel. Throughout the book, she becomes more and more closed up and outcasted from her classmates Some try to reach out to her like Ivy, while others just make fun of her. The new girl Heather is oblivious to what happened over the summer and befriends her, but Melinda wasn’t really interested in being her friend. Her problem was that she was afraid that no one would believe the real reason why she called the cop and think that she was lying just so that she could get some attention. In Speak, Anderson teaches readers that speaking up doesn't always...
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...Imagine a high schooler has everyone against them, but they haven’t done anything wrong. Deep inside they’re burning. Their best friend is now their worst enemy. Their parents don't even take time out of their day to ask them how they’re doing. All the teachers, always harassing them. The counselor tells them that they need help, but never taking the next steps of actually helping the student themselves. They have a secret sunk deep into their heart and mind. They have been raped by their ex-best friends new senior-boyfriend. Why bother even saying anything, no one will listen anyways. In the book Speak by author Laurie Halse Anderson, Melinda Sordino goes through exactly this. She experiences many turning points along her eventful 9th grade...
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...the wrong attitude. And I don't have anyone to sit with” (pg.4) “Speak” by Laurie Halse Anderson is about Melinda who is the main character in the book . The quote above mentioned that Melinda started school on the wrong foot and that was because she was sexually assaulted at a party. She did call the cops which was the right thing to do, but now everybody is mad at her. It is all because of Andy Evens it wasn't even her fault. First, Melinda starts High School as a freshmen with no friends. A group of people were laughing at her when she didn't do anything. Mels ex best friend Rachel was the reason why the group was making fun of her. “I turn around. Its Rachel surrounded by a bunch of kids” (pg.4) Rachel is really mean to Mellie and nobody knows why she called the cops, and she is too shy to talk about it or tell anyone. Melinda when she comes to the cafeteria for lunch she always runs out at lunch because she has nowhere else to go. That has a big effect on Melinda because she is so lonely and wishes she wishes she had just one friend. There is a girl who follows Mel around, and she doesn't really like her that much because she talks too much. “Heather from Ohio sits with me lunch” “She can talk for...
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...Over 5,000 people died of Yellow Fever in Philadelphia in the year 1793. In the book Fever, 1793, by, Laurie Halse Anderson, there is so much suffering throughout Philadelphia. Stricken with Yellow Fever carried by mosquitoes. People died daily, families were lost engulfed by the fever. During the story our main character Mattie goes through many things. The importance of family is shown by there family’s refusal to be apart. There is so much suffering, there are death carts picking up the dead as is they were nothing. Mattie must persevere in order to not get sick and just survive until the frost. Importance of family is shown in ways that make is appear like Mattie and her family are inseparable. For example, Mattie is hit by...
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...Fever 1793 is about how a very bad fever struck the plague of 1793. The Author is Laurie Halse Anderson, she came across an article in 1993, in her local newspaper commemorating the epidemic that had devastated Philadelphia two centuries before. Laurie decided to write a version of her own about fever 1793. I selected this particular article because honestly i’ve always been interested in history, even though this isn’t about the holocaust I’m very interested in that. All the stuff about the plagues, holocaust, and certain things intrigue me. Summary August 1793. A fourteen year old girl named Matilda(Mattie) Cook lives with her mom, named Lucille Cook, and her grandfather in Philadelphia. Her mom runs a coffeehouse with Eliza, her cook, and Polly, her maid. Everything was going perfectly fine until, the waterfront was abuzz with reports of diseases. The “fever” spreads from the docks to Mattie’s home, causing everything she loves to be in serious trouble. Soon thousands flee the city and go to the country. Then Mattie is soon trapped in a living nightmare, the fever reaches her house and she must struggle to build a better life must give way to something even more important- the fight to stay alive....
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...The Speak novel is about a girl named Melinda. Melinda was raped when she went to a summer party with her friend. She didn’t tell anyone because it is too embarrassing to talk about. Melinda is a 14 year old girl from Syracuse, New York. Her identity is shaped by her family that is always busy and all of the friends that she has lost. In the novel during a parent teacher conference Melinda says,”I have no friends, I have nothing”(Anderson 92). When she says she has no friends it is because none of her friends know about what has happened to her so she lost all of them. When she says she has nothing I think she is saying there is nothing that she really cares about in her life. Her teacher Mr.Freeman says, “I think you have a lot to say, and...
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...It's not hard to speak; between rumors and confessions, words spill from our lips all the time. After all, we all naturally enjoy verbalizing our thoughts and being listened to. Those who are unable, or unwilling, to gain such attention always have a reason. Usually, these individuals are the ones who have something important to share. Melinda Sordino - the main character of Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson - is the epitome of such a character, she had several reasons to be silent. Melinda took nearly a year to speak out because she was surrounded by people who wanted to speak more than listen. For her, every reason became another wall, blocking and limiting her capability to speak. The start of Melinda's degeneration into utter mental and physical seclusion was the scarring event that took place at a party over summer. It was then she unwillingly experienced her first sexual encounter with senior Andy Evans. From the first protest to the last (verbal or otherwise), Melinda's voice was not heard, not listened to, and not heeded. Consequently, when she called the police, the teen couldn't say that she had been raped before the voice on the other line made the decision to send aid. Police rushed in to find a rowdy crowd of partying teens with alcohol. The party attendees and her friends were quick to make a cursory assessment and a superficial inquiry of the truth before promptly labeling her as the Squealer. Subconsciously known or quietly acknowledged, a prison began to build...
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...Research Paper Sara Lewis Dec. 03, 2013 Censorship of Poetry There are many debates and arguments on the topic of Censorship. However, in this essay, I will focus on only one; Censorship's importance in books and, more specifically, poetry. Some say, to protect our children, censorship is needed; cutting out overly violent and gory scenes and or sexual content, along with other inappropriate types of media, is very important in the lives of parents and children alike. Others, however, wish that censorship was not so strict. Censorship has removed content from schools that are considered necessary; classics like Tom Sawyer are in a dangerous spot, as is the works of DH Lawrence, because of this law that has control of what we see, hear, and expose ourselves to. In some cases, this law is useful; however, there are limits to what it can do. Censorship can go from simply trying to keep our media and content clean for our children, to full censorship and banning of books because of one simple word. Even though censorship is needed in most parts of the media to control the inappropriate content, it should not be used when it comes to scholastic content, especially books and poetry. Poets, especially, few this law as a ball and chain of sorts; not just poets, but artists, musicians, creators; all do not like it when one wrongly put word would mean the destruction of their whole work. But, when it comes to books, knowledge, and poetry, censorship should never be used. Censorship...
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...Alexa St. Angelo Mrs. Wahlberg Grade 10 Period 7 CP 11 March 2013 A Silent Outcast's Dark Secret The novel "Speak" written by Laurie Halse Anderson is a story known to most teens. Laurie Halse Anderson did a great job of interpreting many modern struggles most teens may face today. Not every teen is enjoying their high school experience or may have it as easy as their peers do. Freshman Melinda Sordino did not have her ninth grade year go as planned for her. Her story is told in this book. This is a powerful novel that is great for opening discussions and shining awareness on topics such as violence, sex, language, drinking, drugs and smoking. "Speak" tells the story of 13 year old Melinda Sordino, who has a rough first year of high school. The previous summer, Melinda busted a party by calling the cops. No one understood why she did so, and this one act of hers is what made her an outcast her freshman year. It was made known what she had done that night and people weren't easy on her for this. With her friends not talking to her and the constant judgment of those around her who didn't even know her, this caused Melinda unbelievable stress. Melinda, now a mute and friendless, only found comfort in herself but she could never remain eased for too long because there was something else that happened that night that was causing her nonstop stress. She couldn't find the voice to speak about what had happened to her, and she didn't have anyone she could talk about...
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