Speak Part Numero Dos!

In the second book discussion for Speak, my group discussed the changing high school life of Melinda Sordino.
We discussed the fact that Melinda portrays the type of person who longs for attention from anyone even of she wants to isolate herself from the outside world. In one case scenario, Melinda's only friend in high school, Heather, tells Melinda that she did not want to be her friend anymore since she had a 'bad reputation'. At the mention of this, Melinda got upset. Even if she's the type of person who does not want to be aroud people, Melinda still feeels hurt because she now knows that she would have to be completely alone. She also pushes people away. A classamte of Melinda, David Petrakis, had invited Melinda to a party but she refused to attend.
The fact that we didn't understand was why Melinda was so hurt by the breakup with Heather if she had already stated from the beginning that Heather was only a disposable friend. She was only there when she need her and then she was planning to get rid of her whenever she wanted to.
Melinda's ex-best friend, Rachel, had stood up for what she believed in during class and in the end, she got the entire class punished. In her mind, Melinda said, "That's what you get for speaking up," (102). This shows that Melinda is afraid to speak up for whatever happened to her in the past. She does not want to tell people what her situation is because she is afraid that she will either get judged or that people would not care and not believe her.
In Speak, me and my group members found signs of symbolism. In the book, Melinda is discussing about symbolism in one of the books she must read in class. This sort of lead us to believe that it was intentionally written about throughout the story to show that Speak itslef has symbolism. For example, the tree solely represents Melinda in every way. In one case, Melinda had drew a tree that was scarred and that had many branches reaching out form it. The tree portrays the type of person that Melinda is because the scars on the tree implies that Melinda has been through something tough during her life and that has left her with bad memories. The branches that extend from the tree represent what lies ahead of Melinda as in the new chapters of her life. Branches on a tree show that many things can happen during a lifetime and that we get pulled in many different directions.
Finally, we learn what actually happened to Melinda. She was raped at a summer party. The reason why Melinda has no more friends was because they shunned her. After she was in shock of what had happened at the party, Melinda had called the police and they had to shut down the party. That was the only reason why they didn't want to be friends with her.
Overall, the book is starting to get even more intersting. We get to see into the life of a young teenage girl who has to struggle within her high school life for something that was out of her control. I predict that the final section to Speak will tell of how Melinda will finally reveal her secret to someone instead of keeping it all in without letting anyone know what lies behind the real person.

Speak Part Numero Uno!

Our first group discussion about our book, Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson was great! Although we had a very small proportion of our book to read, I felt as if my group was able to break down the book to the very last subject.

In the first part to Speak, we are introduced to a girl named Melinda Sordino who holds on to a secret that we are not aware of yet.The only thing that we know is the Melinda's old best friends do not want to be around her anymore, leaving her isolated in high school.

At first, my group pulled apart the title. We think that, of course, it relates to Melinda, but we were unsure why. I responded by saying that the main theme of the book is to learn how to speak up for ourselves to be better understood. We said that Melinda is scared to speak up for herself when it comes down to what really happened to her. She is afraid of being judged and by not talking about her past is her mechanism for trying to forget although it is still always with her no matter what.

In art class, the students are given a word and they must draw that word throughout the entire year changing up the forms and giving an entire new meaning to the word. Melinda ended up choosing 'tree' and the most thought provoking question that was brought up was what does the tree represent? My group came up with the idea that the tree symbolizes Melinda. A tree has many branches and each one of the branches can represent Melinda's new chapters in her life. Melinda needs to branch out while she is in high school since she's just letting her life pass her by due to the fact that she's holding on to a secret that she doesn't dare mention to anyone.

In the end of the section, the author provides Melinda's report card. What stood out to all of us the most was that the only A that Melinda had in all of her classes was in art. We all wondered why this was and then we postulated that she gets a good grade in art since it isn't a class that requires speaking. People are able to express their feeling through art and instead of them speaking for their art, the art speaks for them.

Finally, we discussed how Melinda is afraid of mirrors. We had came up with the idea that she is afraid to look at herself in the mirror and see what has become of her. There was an incident before her secret in which Melinda was supposed to see herself in the mirror and picture her future, but when she did, she explained how she didn't see anything. This provides us with the idea that Melinda does not know where she is going with herself.