Melinda Sordino In Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak

In the United States, a forcible rape takes place approximately every 6 minutes (Statistic Brain Research Institute). Melinda Sordino is the main character in Laurie Halse Anderson’s novel, Speak. Sordino nearly stops verbalizing after an unknown incident. Throughout the novel, this incident is revealed to be a rape. This occurrence takes place at an end-of-summer party, at which, after being sexually assaulted, Sordino calls the police, causing the party to end. As a consequence of not maintaining her friendships over the summer, Sordino starts her freshman year in high school as an outcast; therefore, she no longer socializes, nor does she have any friends. In addition, the relationships in her household are deteriorating as her lack of ability to express her feelings deepens. In the book Speak, Laurie Halse Anderson creates an extended metaphor for Melinda to help develop Melinda’s character. In the novel, she directly and actively compares her

character to a tree. The most notable uses of this metaphor occur when the character begins painting trees, when the character tells her friend Rachel about the incident and when the character refers to her assailant as a nightmare.
In an attempt to express her pain, Sordino starts drawing trees in Mr.

Freeman’s class, “ For a solid week, ever since the pep rally, I’ve been painting watercolors of trees that have been hit by lightning. I try to paint them so that they are nearly dead, but not totally” (Anderson 30-31). The character is willfully trying to make her trees look dead to demonstrate her emotional emptiness and turmoil; furthermore, it is implied that her trees are drawn according to her mood variations, provided that she starts drawing nearly-dead trees after the pep rally. Besides being her art teacher, Mr. Freeman also acts as a mentor. While helping her develop her tree drawings, he helps Melinda grow emotionally and rise above her horrid circumstance as well. Although Melinda has not fully recovered yet, the improvement in her drawings is a sign that she has learned to overcome her struggle. Undoubtedly, her drawings become neat and pleasant-looking as Sordino recovers from her trauma, this is seen towards the end of the

novel.
After being raped, Melinda does not feel comfortable to tell anyone until finally, she makes amends with Rachel and tells her, “some guy raped me. Under the trees. I didn’t know what to do” (Anderson 183). This is a pivotal moment in the book, wherein Anderson strengthens the character’s metaphor by including the fact that Melinda was raped under the trees, also, that reveals the significance of that event, granted that Melinda starts drawing and painting trees as a means to represent the incident and how she feels.
Sordino refers to whom, later in the book is revealed to be Andy Evans as a nightmare, “I see IT in the hallway. IT goes to merryweather… IT is my nightmare and I can’t wake up. IT sees me. IT smiles and winks. Good thing my lips are stitched together or I’d throw up” (Anderson 45). Clearly, the trauma that Andy Evans causes to Sordino is devastating, when making an allusion to a nightmare, Melinda tells the reader how miserable it is to go through her situation. That builds Anderson’s metaphor by emphasizing how significant the tree is as a symbol of that rape. By stating that she was raped “ under the trees”, Sordino gives detailed information as to how her memory was built around that overwhelming incident. This is, indeed, an underlying reason to Sordino’s fixation for trees, also, that gives the author the foundation of the character’s metaphor.
In conclusion, it is valid to say that all of the examples above are valuable representations of Laurie Halse Anderson’s extended metaphor. Anderson’s character, Melinda Sordino, goes through many hardships, including her cessation of speaking, which many times in Speak, does not help her stand up for herself when she needs to, thus, that leads her to a painful recovery. Because Sodino cannot speak, she finds a way to express her feelings through art and tree drawing. Speak is an example of innumerable situations in the real world, where often times, sexual assault victims cease to speak and refuse to seek help.