Friends To Enemies: Speak By Laurie Halse Anderson

Friends to Enemies In high school people lose and gain many friends. As you go through high school with all the different clubs and sports you’re going to meet a lot of people but when doing so you need to keep your real childhood friends close. They will always have your back. The author of Speak, Laurie Halse Anderson uses the character Melinda to show that you need to stay close with friends while growing up because once you lose the real ones only the fake are left. The first time the author showed that Melinda lost her real friends was when she goes to school on the first day and she didn’t have anyone to sit by. Instead of Melinda going to talk to her friends she thinks to herself “there is no point for looking my ex-friends” because they don’t like her or talk to her anymore (Anderson 4). Basically the author is showing us that Melinda has lost all of her friends from her childhood. From this we can infer that Melinda has either done something or said something to her old friends to make them not like her. This detail is significant because Melinda is all alone and no one likes her right now. The author demonstrates this again when they are in the bathroom with Rachel. We can tell that Rachel doesn’t like Melinda when she “blows a candy cigarette smoke ring in [her face]” (Anderson 21). In other words Rachel was trying to disrespect Melinda by blowing the smoke in her face. Rachel thought that if she showed Melinda that she doesn’t like her so she try’s to make her feel bad about herself. This clearly suggests that Rachel does not want anything to do with Melinda. Another example of Melinda losing her friends is when Heather joins the “Marthas”. For instance when Heather finds a new clan and the text says “Heather has found a clan-The Marthas” (Anderson 42). Meanwhile Melinda still hasn’t found a friend group. In other words, Heather has made new friends and starts to hangout with them more than she hangouts with Melinda. From this we can infer that Heather is trying to make new friends and be outgoing, while Melinda isn’t putting herself out there and making new friends and meeting new people. At the end of the scene where Heather joins the Marthas the reader can infer that Heather might be moving on to better things …show more content…
If you lose those friends then you make new friends that don’t care as much and will only care about themselves. In the book Speak, the author, Laure Halse Anderson uses the character Melinda to show that if you lose your real friends then only the fake are left. Melinda didn’t make very many new friends except for one, Heather. She was very outgoing and wasn’t scared to make new friends and try. On the other hand, Melinda is shy and doesn’t like to interact with other people. Heather made other new friends besides Melinda and ended up leaving Melinda behind of her other friends. Even if you have lost some friends over the years it is always good to be on good terms with them, Speak reminds us that friends that don’t care about you will leave you for the “cool kids” in a blink of an