There are many major conflicts in this book that can be seen directly from the start. Melinda was an outcast with no friends. (4) Her “Best friend” was rude to her and didn’t talk to her. (5) Not having any friends was hard and she needed one. Then she met the new girl Heather and they become friends. Everything was fine for a while, but she knows that everything that is bottled up will come out. A huge conflict in this story was at a party that happened at the end of the previous school year. Invited by her friend Rachel they went and drank.
Then after she met a boy, Andy Evans, she was raped by him. (135) After this happened she called the cops and the party was destroyed. (136) Every time she sees Andy she is afraid of him that he will hurt her again. Andy finally finds the secret closet Melinda has and Attacks her and tells her to stop spreading lies about him. (194) she is saved by the lacrosse team in the end. These conflicts make the book come alive. Laurie Anderson does a great job of characterizing Melinda. She is shown as a girl who is quiet and more keeps to herself.
She is afraid mostly of getting hurt. She needed friends that would help her through anything. She is an artistic person who finds art as a way to speak her mind but always struggles because she is afraid of letting her emotions go. “I don’t know how what I am supposed to feel. ” (122) she finds that once you open up it is easier to let people help you and have more people be in your life. She knows that with her friends that opening up will get them back. The setting of this book is very important. There are many different places that Melinda is seen in.
Book Review: International Conflict Resolution
The first chapter of the book talks about the peace-making and de-escalation strategies. It discusses the theoretical approaches of statism, pluralism and populism in reference to the international conflict. The author of the book convinces the reader that effective conflict resolution should make use of convincing power and positive sanctions. Therefore, he argues that win-win solutions are ...
First is the school where she has to go through the whole year with little to know friends. Also not liking it one bit. Another setting is the old janitor closet. This is where she goes and feels that she can be herself. It is also where Andy Evans confronts her about what she has been saying. (194) Another setting is Melinda’s house where in her room she can do what she feels will help her. She also does something’s that harm her like cutting herself because she becomes depressed. (87) Finally the woods where she was raped by Andy.
This is where she is scared and never wants to return. Setting has a big part of this book. The theme of this book is hard to see in the beginning of the book but towards the end it becomes clear. The theme could be that if you keep the wrong secrets it can hurt you in the end. Melinda keeping the secret of being rapped from everyone was huge. She needed to tell people or else they wouldn’t know what really happened at that party. When she did tell her friend Rachel she didn’t believe her and thought that she was just trying to get her away from him. 184) she shouldn’t have kept the secret in the end it ruined friendships. Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson is about the protagonist Melinda Sordino and her journey through her freshmen year at high school. I really enjoyed this book. The only thing that I didn’t like about this book was that it took until about three quarters of the book for her to actually say what happened to her. Once she said that the whole book makes more sense. I would recommend this book to older teens just because it does talk about an adult topic of rape. In all this book was a great book and a very easy read.
