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 …show more content…
“Rape is always the rapist's fault. People never "ask for it" because of the clothes they wear or the way they act. If sex is forced against someone's will, it's rape” (Nemours). Melinda meets Andy at the party and she started having a good time with him and moves with him to the darker parts of the woods, and even though Melinda went on her own freewill with Andy to the woods, he still forced himself on her when she clearly was trying to escape- which ultimately would be consider date rape. Throughout the novel, Melinda has a hard time speaking of what happen to her and does not want to acknowledge the problem. At the end of the marking period Melinda encounter Andy Evans, who she hates, and refers him as IT, “IT sees me. IT smiles and winks. Good thing my lips are stitched together or I’d throw up”. Melinda is under pressure since she has been living in this nightmare. Her rapist is a guy at her school, and he’s talking to her former best friend. The rape changed Melinda and forces her to change though violence. It changes her physically and mentally, such as not speaking, not sleeping, not even cleaning her hair and other things that are noticeable but nobody really seems to really listen or see what Melinda is going through. Melinda states,” I just want to sleep. The whole point of not talking about it, of silencing the memory, is to make it go away, it won’t. I’ll need brain surgery to cut it out of my head” (Anderson, 81-82). This quote shows Melinda’s struggle trying to forget what happen to her at the party, the memory will stay with her, even if it is below the surface. At this point, Melinda is realizing that silence and repression will not lead to forgetting what happened. When she says she want to sleep she means two things which are: she actually wants to sleep but is not able to
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 an end-of-the-summer party before the start of her freshman year in high school. Ever since she was raped, she has completely changed. However, I think she showed signs of improvement during the second half of the year. Ever since the party, Melinda rarely talked to anybody, including her parents. Nevertheless, I noticed that during the second semester of the year, she talked considerably more.
“Before the rape I felt good. My life was in order. I was getting ready to get married. Afterward everything changed. I kind of lost who I was as a person…
That summer, we realize that she has been raped and has not yet come to terms with what had happened. For multiple times, Melinda has tried to talk until she gave up and stopped trying. Soon enough, her grades started to drop and she started cutting as a whimper for help. This resulted into an overwhelming amount of feelings that she still was not willing to share. Furthermore into the novel, she stumbles upon her art teacher, Mr.Freeman. She complained how her trees suck because she doesn’t know anything. Mr. Freeman explains that that is because she refuses to express her emotions. He says, ”When people don’t express themselves, they die one piece at a time” (122). This refers to when Melinda’s father called to prune the tree just outside their house. Melinda thought the guy was chopping it down when they were actually doing just the opposite. Her dad explained, “He’s not chopping it down. He’s saving it. Those branches were long dead from disease. All plants are like that. By cutting off the damage, you make it possible for the tree to grow again…” (187). Moments later, Melinda comes into a realization that she is like the tree. Both bruised, messed up, and slowly dying, but deep inside you can find a small, clean part of them waiting to burst through the surface. At this
A large percent of murders occur by men for a variety of reasons. Money, love, betrayal, whatever it may be. Male murderer cases need a lot of publicity in order to be a high profile case because they are too common to be top news. However, female murderers will likely always be highly publicized cases due to the rarity of the event. So falls the case of Jodi Arias in this subject.
After being sexually assaulted, a victim herself, Annalise Mabe, on her article “You should have been more careful: when doctors shame rape survivors”, expressed her anger and concerns towards how doctors approach patients that have been sexually assaulted. Her explanation and tone make her seem trustworthy and credible.
Titus Livius (Livy) was a Roman historian that was born in the year 59 B.C.E. and died in 17 A.D. (Ogilvie). During that time Rome was starting to become a world power. Julius Caesar was the dictator and, under his rule, the Roman republic expanded tremendously. Not only did Julius Caesar successfully take over Italy, but he also conquered major threats to the republic at the time, such as Spain and Gaul (Roman-Empire). Following his assassination in 44 B.C.E., the rule was passed to his great-nephew Augustus, who broadened Rome 's reach even further into places such as Egypt and parts of Europe (PBS). However, these and other Roman achievements would have possibly been forgotten had it not been for Livy. Titus Livius played a critical role
The book Speak by Laurie Anderson is about how Melinda Sordino--- an “outcast” girl overcome the trouble in her life, her growth in mind and how she learned to speak up for herself.
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.
In conclusion fourteen year-old Melinda Sordino, finds her lost voice and is no longer a victim of sexual assault but a survivor. Desperate to regain the person she was before her trauma, she did not realize she has been developing into a stronger person. She is learning and growing from experience, which she is now able to speak of.
Speak starts with a young lady, named Melinda, attending her first day of school scoping out the school and staff without any friends. Melinda, being the quiet girl she is in the beginning of the school year, gains new friends, a new girl from out of town, and her art teacher. As the story progress, background on Melinda is revealed. She had lost her friends after calling the cops on the party because she was scared after being raped by a boy named Andy Evans. Melinda’s grades and relationship begins to dwindle down as the year goes on for Melinda forcing her to see the guidance counselor with her parents. She starts to talk a little more to her old friends as her new friend Heather has
The novel Speak, written by Laurie Halse Anderson is about a girl, who gets raped in the summer before the start of her freshman year in high school and the book follows her as she tries to cope with the depression that comes that kind of violation. This book was turned into a movie; and released early in the early 2000’s and when adapting books to film, a lot of information and details are lost in the process. When comparing Speak the novel and Speak the movie, the noticeable differences are; the character relationships, Melinda’s character, and Andy Evans and Melinda’s dynamic.
According to a statement addressing the sexual victimization of college women The Crime and Victimization in America states that, “ One out of four women will be sexually assaulted on a college campus.” This disturbing fact has not minimized throughout the years, instead it is continuing to worsen throughout college campuses. Sexual assault is not an act to be taken lightly. Society must stop pinpointing the individuals who commit these crimes one by one, but rather look at the problem as a whole and begin to understand the main cause of sexual assault and possible methods to reduce these acts of sexual coercion.
The time is the sixth century, the place is Rome and the person is Lucretia, a woman who contributed to one of the biggest parts of Roman history: the creation of the Roman republic. The rape of the virtuous Lucretia by Sextus Tarquinius, the son of Tarquinius Superbus' (an Etruscan king) was the final straw for the Roman people and pushed them to want to change from a monarchy to a republic. From the accounts of the rape of Lucretia from ancient historians like Livy, Cicero and Dionysius, it is clear that Lucretias rape not only spurred the roman people to want to get rid of the Etruscan King and his family, but also revealed the important role of virtue in women in roman society.
Is anyone truly a stranger to nightmares? Has anyone not woken up in a feverish sweat with a racing pulse or pounding heart? Whose eyes have never wildly searched their room for the phantoms of a dream? Now, what if the familiar consolation of learning it was all in your head never came? How do you wake up from a nightmare that is, in fact, a reality? I think I’m getting ahead of myself. What I mean to say is, I was raped, and rape is a nightmare.
On the surface, The Rape of the Lock is a retelling of an episode that caused a feud between two families in the form of an epic. One might believe that in his version, Alexander Pope portrayed the women of the story as shallow, vain little girls, however on a deeper level the women are crucial to the story. Aside from not being as helpless as they appear, each woman possesses a different kind of power that contributes to their character greatly. Rather than being the conceited and shallow figures expected of the time period, the women in The Rape of the Lock posses more power than meets the eye.