Authors Craft Essay: 'Speak' by Laurie Halse Anderson

Most people go through a phase where they feel like they’re voice is unheard. That phase where the words that roll out of their tongue simply vanish into the thin air. Similarly in the story “Speak” by Laurie Halse Anderson, a girl found herself silenced because of a rape incidence earlier in her life. Over time, she finds her voice and the courage to speak her mind. The girl, Melinda, enters high school at the start of the book, she starts alone. She is nervous and retreats into a shell whenever she has to interact with people. Author Laurie Halse Anderson used techniques like symbolism and flashbacks to keep readers predicting, so that they could make an effort to understand why Melinda is so introverted and how her character will evolve through the book.

From the start of the book Melinda was introduced as a shy and introverted 9th grader. With every new page, a bit more was revealed about her. This helped build the readers curiosity and made the reader want to keep reading further to understand more about the character. The author would talk about melinda now and then and then occasionally flip back to the summer and to what happened back then. The author probably did this to build up suspense and gradually develop the cause and effect aspect of Melinda’s present character. The author also revealed more information about Melinda and her friends at a slow pace and probably deliberately to keep the reader anxious to find out more.

The dominant symbol throughout the story are trees. Laurie found an easy way to do this, she engraved her symbol into something that Melinda does at school. Art. At the start of the year, Melinda got to pick a chit of paper with her art assignment on it. Trees. In my opinion, the trees mentioned represent growth of this character. At times, Melinda would not be able to draw trees, this probably symbolized struggle. “I can’t bring it to life” she would say and then give up on drawing fauna. Her trees would be ‘lifeless’ perhaps symbolizing her own inability to speak and interact socially with life around her. The act of giving up could symbolize losing hope after trying to do something over and over again and rarely succeeding. Time spent in the art room is described as tedious and challenging. Maybe this meant that change is a slow and a tiresome process. Finally, at the end of the year Melinda was able to draw trees successfully. This shows relief and strength. The symbol allowed the reader to track Melinda’s character grow as the story progresses?

People might have missed this but, another symbol that has been mentioned repeatedly were Melinda’s lips. Melinda often criticized her lips of being cracked and dry. This could possibly symbolize not taking sufficient care of herself or to symbolize something rarely used. She once said that she didn’t recognize her lips, as though she was talking about not recognizing who she was turning into. It might also show confusion or being unsure of how to manage a situation. Melinda really struggled with speaking up, and she often questions if people would care about what she has to say “would they listen?” or “would they believe me?”. Her lips were the perfect symbol that would help us understand that she hasn’t spoken for a while and wasn’t going to speak up any time soon, which is why it was dry and uncared for. This got me predicting about the end, would she finally speak up? would someone help her to find her voice?

Speaking up isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, and we should respect that. Some people just don’t know how to or are not comfortable to express themselves verbally and they might end up using alternatives, just like how Laurie was able to use trees, Melindas lips and flashbacks as tools to speak for Melinda’s feelings. The effects of events in the past have large impacts on our present selves, this has come out well throughout the story. I, myself, am going to commit to listening up, genuinely care, and try and help someone in a similar situation. I am hoping, but who knows, if there are more Melindas amongst us in real life?

By Manini