In the novel Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, one summer changed everything; a perfect life is turned into a nightmare. Melinda gets assaulted at a party and now her worst nightmare is coming true. Anderson uses terrifying symbols to show Melindas recovery.
Mirrors: many people enjoy looking in mirrors but Melinda doesn’t . Melinda is the one girl who doesn’t enjoy looking into mirrors. I believe that this is because she is scared to see her true Identity. For example, on page 17 Melinda takes the mirror and puts it in the back of his closet. Another section that Melinda has a hard time with mirrors is on pages 50 paragraph two and on page 195 paragraph three when she shatters the glass by getting pushed up against it. If I were Melinda I would be scared out of my mind and I probably would have called the cops the first time instead of just holding in the pain. Melinda is a very strong person for going through what she went through, no one would ever wish this upon even their worst enemy.
Mirrors are very important, but trees tell it all. Trees are the most important aspect in this book, they tell how Melinda is feeling. When Melinda is feeling sad she draws bare trees. Page 30 on the bottom shows Melinda’s stress and how much she wishes that she wouldn’t of had gone on the walk with Andy Evans. More pages that important tree scenes happen on is pages 62,58 and 110. All of those pages talk about how she draws trees that mostly represent death.
Many times that people hangout with guys that they barely know they could do something that would scar you for life. There is a life lesson in this book. The lesson is that if someone has assaulted you need to tell someone because it could hurt other people not only you. Everything has a symbol.
