Speak

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1999

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapters 1-21

Part 2, Chapters 22-44

Part 3, Chapters 45-63

Part 4, Chapters 64-89

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Themes

Finding One’s Voice After It Has Been Lost

After Melinda is traumatized by being raped, she loses her voice almost completely. She cannot bring herself to speak, describing a ball in her throat that forms whenever she tries. Melinda’s inability to speak impairs her ability to enjoy her life and connect with peers, teachers, and her parents. It also prevents her from speaking up for herself in moments of need. Melinda’s silence serves as a symbol of her isolation from the world. She slowly finds her voice through artistic expression and vindicates herself when she reveals the truth about Andy and her experience.

Melinda’s silence is a symptom of her trauma. When she was raped, she could not call out for help and froze. This complete and utter silence follows her throughout the year as she constantly relives the moment. She feels like she is being eaten alive from the inside by her secret, but at the same time, she cannot bring herself to tell anyone. It completely controls her until she starts to rise above it. In the book, Melinda places a poster of Maya Angelou over the mirror in her closet at school. Anderson’s choice of Angelou is fitting because Angelou was raped at age eight by her mother’s boyfriend and stopped speaking for five years after her revelation led her uncles to kill the rapist. In the book, Angelou’s visage watches Melinda; it tells her to warn Rachel, and later, when Andy attacks her, it tells her to “make some noise.” The famous, well-spoken rape survivor helps Melinda find her voice again. (Angelou’s story is told in her autobiographical book, I Know the Caged Bird Sings, for which there is a SuperSummary.)

The first step toward finding her voice comes in the form of artistic expression. Since she cannot speak, she finds a way to voice her emotions through the trees she draws and sculpts. Slowly, Melinda starts to speak, at first by accident. She begins writing notes to others and then says short phrases here and there. She slowly regains her confidence and reconnects with the world. Throughout the year, her trees change form, much like her emotions and responses to her trauma. She eventually decides on an imperfect sketch, symbolizing her acceptance of her scars and her desire to grow from her past. In the end, she decides to tell Mr. Freeman everything.

When Melinda tells Rachel about the rape, it is a turning point in her journey to finding her voice again. It is the first time she reveals the truth to anyone, and although Rachel does not react well, it empowers Melinda to continue speaking out. Melinda writes a warning on the bathroom stall at school telling others to stay away from Andy and soon finds that many other girls have had similar experiences with him. She also learns about suffragettes and their fight to vote, and although she misinterprets their message at first, her friend David soon delivers clarity, reminding her of the importance of speaking out: “The suffragettes were all about speaking up, screaming for their rights. You can’t speak up for your right to be silent. That’s letting the bad guys win. […] Don’t expect to make a difference unless you speak up for yourself” (159). Melinda’s story and the novel empower those silenced by victimization to speak up and support one another.

How Personality and Perception Change as a Result of Trauma

When a person is traumatized by something like rape, it changes them forever. This is exactly what happens to Melinda after she is raped at a summer party when she is thirteen years old. The experience shatters her image of herself and the world and causes her to fall into complete silence. She withdraws from her parents, her friends abandon her, and she is left to fend for herself and cope with the lingering effects of the traumatic experience. Melinda no longer recognizes who she is, and it takes several months before she even begins to confront her experience and start to grow from it.

After her traumatic experience, Melinda does not recognize herself. This begins moments after she is raped, when she is still freshly injured and not fully cognizant of what just happened to her: “I saw my face in the window over the kitchen sink and no words came out of my mouth. Who was that girl? I had never seen her before. Tears oozed down my face, over my bruised lips, pooling on the handset” (136). She copes with this trauma by ceasing to speak and harming herself physically by gnawing at her lip until it bleeds and scabs. Students at school notice the scabs on her lips and withdraw. On top of this, Melinda used to be a B student, but now struggles to find motivation to do well in all of her classes except art. She finds freedom and relief in her art class, but everywhere else, she feels trapped, silenced, and alone. When Andy begins harassing Melinda at school, she responds by freezing in terror. She compares herself to a rabbit in these moments: “I am BunnyRabbit again, hiding in the open. I sit like I haven an egg in my mouth. One move, one word, and the egg will shatter and blow up the world” (117).

As Melinda responds to her trauma, people in her life respond to her. She loses all of her friends after calling the police at the party, and when she stops speaking, her parents withdraw from her in confusion. Melinda’s home life was rocky to begin with, but refusing to communicate with her mother and father seems to compound the situation, causing them to fight more often with each other and with her. At times, they resort to threats and verbal abuse to attempt to get her to care about school or them. Melinda cannot bring herself to tell her parents about what happened to her, and there are multiple occasions when she wants to but instead cries or leaves the room. When Melinda makes a friend in Heather, she soon turns Heather off by refusing to engage in any school activities or hobbies with her. Heather soon expresses this and leaves Melinda alone once again. Mr. Freeman seems to sense that something is wrong in Melinda’s life, and he is the only person who empathizes with her. He encourages her to express it through her art, waiting patiently until she is finally ready to tell him what happened.

Melinda finds a way to transform her traumatic experience into one of growth. She starts telling people about Andy, warning others to stay away from him, and reveals the truth about the rape to Rachel. Melinda also dives into her art, completing several expressive projects and slowly releasing what she describes as a beast living inside of her. Melinda eventually decides to clean out the closet that she used as a hideaway, and when Andy attacks her inside of it, she defends herself with a piece of glass and screams for help. Melinda’s final art project expresses her scars and imperfections and her regained optimism for the future. She hopes to grow out of her trauma and find herself again:

IT happened. There is no avoiding it, no forgetting. NO running away, or flying, or burying, or hiding. Andy Evans raped me in August when I was drunk and too young to know what was happening. It wasn’t my fault. He hurt me. It wasn’t my fault. And I’m not going to let it kill me. I can grow (198).

The Importance of Art as a Form of Self-Expression and Healing

Artistic expression is a key motivation and trauma-processing tool for Melinda throughout the school year. When Melinda begins the school year, she is completely silent and isolated. She finds sanctuary in her art class with Mr. Freeman because it is a place where students are free to be themselves: “The room is full of painters, sculptors, and sketchers during activity period, and some kids stay there until the late late buses are ready to roll” (77). Mr. Freeman is Melinda’s most empathetic teacher and her closest ally throughout the school year, supporting Melinda when she needs it most. He encourages her to express the dark and secret parts of herself and to release her emotions through her art:

The next time you work on your trees, don’t think about trees. Think about love, or hate, or joy, or rage—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 one piece at a time (122).

Melinda has been holding in her experience of assault and refusing to speak almost entirely. Mr. Freeman encourages her most to break through her barriers and overcome her trauma. Although Melinda cannot speak, she can speak through her art, which eventually helps her communicate verbally again: “The art room is one of the places [she] feels safe” (160). There, she can focus on her work without worrying about being judged or isolated.

Melinda’s art project throughout the year revolves around the creation of trees. She uses these trees to express her feelings and her healing process. At first, Melinda’s trees are simple watercolors of trees struck by lightning—a metaphor for how being raped shocked her into being a completely different, silent person. Later, she creates a sculpture out of decaying turkey bones, symbolizing how holding her secret is causing her to die slowly. Inspired by Picasso’s cubism, Melinda also draws a Cubist tree, made up of “hundreds of skinny rectangles for branches. They look like lockers, boxes, glass shards, lips with triangle brown leaves” (119). Meanwhile, Mr. Freeman encourages her to keep going, giving her something to look forward to and strive toward. For her final art project, Melinda draws a simple sketch of an imperfect tree; it has a dead branch due to fall off soon and plenty of new growth springing up toward the sun. Melinda’s last tree symbolizes her newfound optimism and belief that she can grow into a happier person in time.