Today is the first day of school, I walk in scared for highschool and what my future will be. And then, it hits me, waves of nausea come over me as I hear the cruel whispers and feel the stares bearing into me. “Speak” by Laurie HAlse Anderson is a moving narrative about Melinda Sordino. Melinda walks into highschool surrounded by many cliques none of which she was part of and faces constant judgement and alienation. She becomes very depressed and loses who she is all because she was at a party and was brutally raped, so she called the police. Many people at the part were drinking alcohol and were arrested, causing uproar in her school. Everyone shuns her for “ruining” the party but no one actually knows her story. A huge theme in the book “Speak” is transformation. Melinda transforms into a more stable person even though she takes a path filled with hardships to get there.
Melinda learns to express herself and speak her mind through her art class. In her art class she is challenges to convey emotion, to tell a story. This helps Melinda to be able to tell her own story. For example when Melinda first comes into her art class she is told "This is where you can find your soul, if you dare. Where you can touch that part of you you've never dared look at before." This is what Melinda is able to do through her art class and she learns to find her soul. In addition she is also given a very important lesson and told that "Art without emotion is like chocolate cake without sugar… The next time you work on your trees, don't think about trees. Think about love, or hate, or joy, or pain- whatever makes you feel something, makes your palms sweat, or your toes curl. Focus on that feeling. When people don't express themselves, they die on piece at a time.” This advice and lesson helps Melinda to express her emotions and feel a transformation through her art work. Art is an essential part to Melinda’s journey because it gives her a way to express and find herself.
Melinda also grows and learns to express herself through plants and gardening. Gardening gives Melinda a hope for the future and she starts to become a much more emotionally stable person. For example “I dig my fingers into the dirt and squeeze. A small clean part of me waits to warm and burst through the surface. Some quiet Melindagirl I haven't seen in months. That is the seed I will care for.” This helps the reader to understand how gardening gives Melinda hope. She is waiting to burst through the surface and recreate a happier version of herself. Gardening is helping Melinda to work through her trauma and go back to the way her life was before she was raped. In addition the quote “He's not chopping it down. He's saving it. Those branches were long dead from disease. All plants are like that. By cutting off the damage you make it possible for the tree to grow again. You watch - by the end of summer, this tree will be the strongest on the block.” shows a parallel between Melinda and plants. The tree with dead branches is exactly like Melinda, sad, and partly dead. All that needs to be done is to remove the dead parts so that the tree can bloom and grow again. When Melinda sees this happening with a tree it makes her feel hope and like she will be able to grow and bloom again. Gardening and plants give Melinda hope and stability and are an important part of her growth and transformation.
At the beginning of the book Melinda is depressed and has everything bottled up. She doesn’t know how to express herself and feels constantly upset. Throughout the book Melinda learns to express her emotions and tell her story. She learns to speak. By the end of the book Melinda is able to stand up to her assaulter when he tries to assault her again. She has grown and transformed herself into a place where she is more stable. Melinda had a hard journey filled with many obstacles but she overcame it and was able to express herself through art, and gardening. “Speak” by Laurie Halse Anderson tells the compelling story of Melinda. We are all Melinda in some ways, bound by our own demons fighting to grow and to speak.
