Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
effects of bullying on adolescent
the effects on bullying for young children
the effects on bullying for young children
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: effects of bullying on adolescent
Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson, is first-person narrative about overcoming our habits and misfortunes. It takes place at Merryweather High over the course of a year. The main character, Melinda, is a fourteen year-old, who is just starting high school. She is introduced, at first, as someone who doesn’t speak to anyone, almost, at all. All the other people in the high school seem to detest her. They say hateful things to her and throw objects at her. She seems not bothered by any of this. She is in her own being.
As the story progresses clues to why people hate her so much are revealed. There is mentioning of a party that Melinda, some how, ruined. People say that they or someone they knew got in trouble at the party. Melinda wants to forget that party. She blocks it out of her head. At every mention of that night Melinda cringes.
Melinda doesn’t like school. She hates the people and despises the classes. All of the classes except art. She loves her art class. Their assignment for the year is to create a piece of art, depicting a given image, that makes a statement. Melinda’s object is a tree. She has trouble with the tree.
Melinda starts school off in a bad way. She continuously gets in trouble with numerous teachers. She never does any homework. She mostly takes naps. Worst of all, in her mind, she has no friends. This does not change until she meets Heather, the new girl. Heather is...
Katie’s teacher, Mr. Dubey, puts a very high emphasis on the students at Katie’s school about how important school is. Because Katie starts to feel bad for using David to get into Harvard, his attitude toward the topic changes and he tells that she should be self-serving and not really care what people say and to not "ruin the rest of your life just because you feel a little guilty right now"(74). All of these conflicting messages on what Katie should be like, how she should treat others an...
Moreover, Melinda doesn’t know anybody, but all she sees is people going in groups. On page 4 it says.”We fall into clans: Jocks.Country Clubbers, Idiot Savants, Cheerleaders, Human waste, Eurotrash Future Fascists of America, Big Hair Chix, the Martha's, Suffering Artists, Thespians Goths, Shredders. I am clanless” Even on the first day or week of school everyone goes their separate ways . Another thing I see in this quote is that people join all these clans because they can’t face that they can’t for make any new friends. They don’t want to face the difficulties in life that Melinda needed to go through in her first year of high school. The last thing I see in this quote is that there is different types of personalities in the school that they want to be known for.
In the breathtaking book, Speak, by Laurie Hales Anderson, she gives insight into the ups and downs of high school in the eyes of her main character, Melinda. More specifically, Anderson focuses on one down fall, which happens primarily through Melinda “[Going] to [an] end-of the summer party, with beer, seniors, and music” and getting raped (Anderson, 133). While rape victims should tell their story, Anderson rejects the significance of having Melinda talk of her case as a way of showing the consequence of holding your tongue. Efficiently, as a result of her not speaking of her assault at the party, it causes her to go through an important change from the beginning of the novel, to the ending of the novel. According
Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson, is a story written in the first person about a young girl named Melinda Sordino. The title of the book, Speak, is ironically based on the fact that Melinda chooses not to speak. The book is written in the form of a monologue in the mind of Melinda, a teenage introvert. This story depicts the story of a very miserable freshman year of high school. Although there are several people in her high school, Melinda secludes herself from them all. There are several people in her school that used to be her friend in middle school, but not anymore. Not after what she did over the summer. What she did was call the cops on an end of summer party on of her friends was throwing. Although all her classmates think there was no reason to call, only Melinda knows the real reason. Even if they cared to know the real reason, there is no way she could tell them. A personal rape story is not something that flows freely off the tongue. Throughout the story Melinda describes the pain she is going through every day as a result of her rape. The rape of a teenage girl often leads to depression. Melinda is convinced that nobody understands her, nor would they even if they knew what happened that summer. Once a happy girl, Melinda is now depressed and withdrawn from the world. She hardly ever speaks, nor does she do well in school. She bites her lips and her nails until they bleed. Her parents seem to think she is just going through a faze, but little do they know, their daughter has undergone a life changing trauma that will affect her life forever.
Furthermore, Amanda suffers from school anxiety and frequently has symptoms such as feeling sick and vomiting before or during school. When the therapist inquiries about school, Amanda become nervous, irritant, and fidget around in her chair. Amanda explains that she likes her teachers; however, she did not like attending school. Children at her school tease her about her appeara...
For the past few weeks, we have been reading the book Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson. The book is about a girl named Melinda Sordino, who for the most part refused to speak or interact with others after being raped at a end-of-the-summer party before the start of her freshman year in highschool. Ever since she was raped, she completely changed. However, I think she shows signs of improvement during the second half of the year.
The plot of the book, Speak is that Melinda Sordino, a freshman at Merryweather High went to an end of the summer party with some of her friends. Things take a turn for the worst when a senior named Andy Evans sexually assaults her at the party without her friends knowing about it. Melinda is frightened, afraid, and does not know what to do so she calls 911 busting the party, and causing her friends and everyone at that school to hate her, even if they don’t know her.
Speak is a cleaver and an ironic title for a story in which the main character chooses not to speak. The story is written in first-person narration from the point of view of protagonist, Melinda Sordino. Speak is written like an interior monologue in the mind of an introverted teenage girl, like excerpts from her personal diary during her miserable freshman year of high school. Instead of blending in and finding her way through high school. She withdraws and secludes herself from the other students. She calls herself an "outcast." Melinda is so desperate to hide from the world; she turns an old janitor's closet at the high school into her safe haven. She cuts classes to hide in her closet. How lonely could this teenage girl be? All of these characteristics are common in assault victims. Melinda has been seriously disturbed by something traumatic and doesn't feel comfortable talking about it, nor does she really trust anyone. Teenage depression is a common
At first she complains that it is too easy but later on she notices that she has trouble “bringing trees to life”. Trees can symbolize life and strength and the fact that she has trouble drawing them might symbolize her struggle and depression. We can see as the book goes on that Melinda gets better at drawing trees and she learns different ways of drawing them. As Melinda begins to open up to other people and heal, her drawings get better and more detailed. This might symbolize her growth as a person.
At the beginning of the novel, Melinda is given an art project to work on for the rest of the school year. To her destiny, she picks a piece of paper that read “tree”. “Tree? It’s too easy. I learned how to draw a tree in second grade” (12), Melinda explains. This shows how Laurie
In the book Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, Melinda, the main character, goes through a series of events that affect her in the long run and shape her identity. Melinda goes through an eventful evening at a party and keeps it to herself for a long period of time. This is just one of the things that affects her. Some other turning points in Melinda’s life is when she finally tells someone about what happened at that party, as well as losing her friend Heather. These are all things that
The main character of speak, Melinda Sordino, has been raped by a guy name Andy Evans at a party the summer before entering her freshman year. Melinda does not speak about what happened to her at the party and nobody would talk to her because of her decision to call the cops. Although she decided to leave before the cops showed up. “I learned what makes men rape… it is power and privilege. I learned what makes women silent. It is fear…” (Pearson, 24). Melinda is determined to keep quiet and erase the memory of what happened to her at the party. Essentially, she does not speak at all, which is physically and emotionally hurting her by not speaking to someone, and it seems as no one really notices or cares to talk to Melinda to why she is acting
Her friends always asked her for help doing some things, good and bad, but she did her best to stay away from that kind of things. Like on page 106 in the novel when her friend Heather says “When you get through a life sucks phase, I’m sure lots of people will want to be your friend. But you just can’t cut classes or not show up to school. What’s next-- hanging out with the dopers?” and Melinda replies “Is this the part where you try to be nice to me?” and Heather replies “You just have a reputation.” This shows how negative peer pressure affects people, like how Heather thinks that she will end up hanging out with druggies, because she has already been pressured into skipping school and class. Andy Evans, the guy who raped her, always put himself around her, almost as peer pressure to not tell anyone, because he knew he could overpower her and that he was intimidating to her. Although Melinda had gone through a lot in her first year of high school, peer pressure had affected her, and she tried to seem invisible to everyone, until she finally figured out where she belonged and who she was, then exposing Andy Evans which allowed everyone
Speak, is a novel written by Laurie Halse Anderson, about a girl entering high school, for the first time, with a heavy secret weighting on her. Melinda Sordino begins freshman year at Merryweather High School, being a complete different person. Over the summer, Melinda and her friends went to a senior party, where Melinda ended calling the police. This caused her friends and the people at the party to socially reject her, even though they didn’t knew that before the phone call, Andy Evans raped her. Due to the phone call, Melinda enters high school without friends and having to see Andy Evans everyday. Her only “safe” place in the entire school is art class, where Mr. Freeman is the teacher. Mr. Freeman is the only teacher Melinda doesn’t dislike or avoids, because he listens and understands her, but also shows her the value of honesty.
“Speak” by Laurie Halse Anderson presents Melinda’s (a teenage girl) life as she drifts through her adolescent years, where she struggles to overcome internal depression, as well as typical issues, involving her social life. Melinda’s life in an obscure world, where enigmatic challenges constantly clog her path towards a normal and healthy life, she feels lost and betrayed. Likewise, the boy that raped her attends the same school as her, causing her to have constant memories of the event. Thus, Melinda’s defective life compromising of rape, lack of communication, and depression mirrors the lives of many teens around the world. In addition, this book revolves around the dominant theme of adolescence, resulting to an effect of a realistic- fiction novel.