Melinda Sordino

No one knows. No one listens. No one cares. Melinda Sordino is an “outcast”. In the novel, Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, Melinda is unfortunately a young victim of rape who silently possesses a hidden, screaming message. Ever since the incident occurred at the summer party, Melinda has certainly discovered a few positive, defining characteristics of herself. She has definitely grown from being temporarily defined as timorous and fearful of speaking up into a courageous, passionate teenager. Throughout the entire story every defining trait of hers are represented by the symbol of trees and more specifically, her drawing of a tree in Mr. Freeman’s art class is her own proof of her journey to discover her true identity, and her emotional recovery. To others, it was her tool used to communicate and express herself without actually speaking, but in return it encouraged her to finally open up at the very end. Trees are simple symbols and are commonly used in literature. They portray life and death; when a tree dies its seeds are planted to grow into new, mature trees. Melinda’s growth as a person is obviously represented throughout the story as a tree, her tree. A seed is figuratively planted when she buds for a chance to redeem her actions, and the tree grew when she actually started to change. However, according to Melinda in the beginning trees are simple objects to draw and possibly “too easy”. After picking the paper with the word tree from the box, she even tried to put it back in. but fortunately Mr.Freeman-Melinda’s art teacher- stopped her from doing so. Melinda didn’t realize that something so simple could be created into something sophisticated and beautiful. Of course, Melinda struggled with making her tree filled with life which only emphasized her frustration and stress even more. Eventually with time, Melinda is seemingly “getting better at this, but it's not good enough” (Anderson ) according to Mr. Freeman- Melinda’s art teacher. Her tree turned out to be “an average, ordinary, everyday, boring tree” (Anderson ). Melinda progressing, slowly. Melinda is …show more content…
Melinda strives to perfect her tree to accurately reflect her feelings, and she’s thriving emotionally. She didn’t understand that the trees she was drawing was in due course going to turn out to be a beautiful and unique artwork with such an important meaning behind it, her life. The trees in the beginning lacked of detail and in general, lifeless. Her trees never meant anything more than negative emotions and ideas of which consists depression, loneliness, and low self-esteem.Yet, by the end of the fourth marking period, Melinda’s tree is prominently improving and is “definitely breathing; little shallow breaths like it just shot up through the ground this morning” (Anderson 196). Once Melinda has finally completed her tree she looks at her “homely sketch”. She realizes that “it doesn’t need anything. Even through the river in her eyes she can see that. It isn’t perfect and that makes it just right” (Anderson 196). At this point the importance of the tree she has been striving to represent of herself resulted as her redemption, not a tree at all. If Melinda’s life was perfect she could’ve drew the same trees she have drawn in second grade with the perfect, straight trunks and branches, but in reality her life is not even close to being perfect. It’s imperfectly