Thoughts on: Laurie Halse Anderson's "Speak"

“Speak” is an incredibly well-written novel about a girl who is unable to say the very thing that she needs to say to be free from the pain of what has happened to her. Melinda Sordino’s rape changes everything in her life from her ability to relate to others to her view on the world in general. Although I found it frustrating to some extent—it is obviously not a smoothly flowing teenage novel like “Forever”—it is still very powerful and effective.

I really appreciate the Laurie Halse Anderson’s style of writing with this novel because it becomes a way to understand Melinda’s world to an even deeper extent. The paragraphs are broken and feel quick and desperate as though she cannot stand to think about any one subject for very long, and it is more than just the constantly active mind of a teenage girl. Through Anderson’s style we are better able to see that Melinda carries the experience at the forefront of her mind and she cannot decide what to do with it, so all other thought becomes a way to distract herself from the reality of what has happened to her. The way that Anderson structures the dialogue and thoughts are also very relevant to Melinda’s psychological state. There seems to be a very blurry line between thought and speech—especially for Melinda—and the novel feels like a play at times when Anderson gives direction as to who is speaking. Melinda’s experience has made her so aware of how she feels most of the time that she senses the truth about other things as well. She sees how the world is almost putting on a play—and that either nobody is truthful with themselves, or they don’t want to admit the truth that they see. Melinda sees everything as 2-dimensional.

As I started this book, I kept thinking,” I’ve heard this story before”. It took a few pages to realize that I have seen the movie, and I hated it at first! Like the novel, the movie feels very inconsistent and awkward. I was eventually able to get into the movie, but I don’t think that I ever figured out—until I read the book—that this discontinuity was deliberate. I enjoyed the novel much more than the movie, but then, that is probably because I already knew what had happened to Melinda and it was easy to understand why the author would use such fragmented text.

I would definitely consider teaching this book to an adolescent class. It deals with a very real issue in a very real way. I think that students can relate to the setting, and while I hope that none of the students would ever be able to personally relate to Melinda’s rape, there is a possibility that some may have had a similar experience. Like “Forever”, it may be hard for some boys to relate to a novel written from the perspective of a teenage girl’s mind, but it is such a unique perspective, and the issues that it deals with—rape, family problems, problems with friends—are very real to most students.