Hugh Laurie

Notably, Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson was a banned book, just as The Cather in the Rye by J.D. Salinger was. One man, named Richard Swier , even deemed Speak to be “child pornography. ” Although it contains one scene where Melinda is raped, it is not graphic or cause gratification in reading. Speak is a cautionary tale about the emotional aftermath of rape. It tackles bullying, depression, sexual harassment, and family dysfunction. It teaches children, teenagers, and people of all ages to…

Silence is uncommon today when sharing what is on everyone’s mind is just a click away. Malala Yousafzai expresses that, “We realize the importance of our voice only when we are silenced.” Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson follows the freshman year after the rape of Melinda Sordino who struggles between keeping her mouth shut and using her voice against her attacker. The novel explores the crippling power of being voiceless to illustrate the importance of speaking up. Melinda demonstrates the…

The book Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson is about Melinda Sordino, a ninth-grader in Merryweather High School in Syracuse, New York. From the outside, she might have looked like an ordinary girl, but inside she held a secret that had withdrawn her to a life of silence and melancholy. She had gone through a traumatizing event that had changed her whole life to the point where she had lost all hope and became self-destructive. Melinda was raped by Andy Evans, a senior, at a party before the start…

Laurie Halse Anderson’s Historical Fiction novel, Fever 1793, takes place in Philadelphia- a large city- during the fever epedemic. Mattie Cook lives in a coffeehouse with her Mother, Grandfather, and her cook Eliza. By the time the fever epedemic breaks out, Mattie has to be strong in order to survive. Anderson uses descriptive words and sentence varitey to show the theme of the story; bravery. The author creates this lesson to show that someones bravery can save an entire city. The theme…

stop but she cannot do it. She does not recognize herself anymore. Symbolism can be used in so many ways in a book and it can have a lot of meaning in the novel when you use symbolism. Mouth and lips have the greatest impact in the novel Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson because it shows how she expressed herself throughout the story. First and foremost, Melinda starts to bite her lip when she remembers that she was raped. Melinda hates to think about the time that she was raped, but she…

Trees in Speak In the novel Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, a young girl named Melinda is raped at a party over the summer and calls the cops. The party is busted and everyone blames Melinda for ruining the fun, even though they did not know the full story. When school starts again, she is friendless and bullied. Nobody knows that she was raped; they think she called the cops because people were drinking. Melinda rarely talks because she is afraid of what people will think when she speaks. The…

small people can make a difference in the world with a little bit of courage. A example of this is on pg(177-180) when Melinda says no to heather “she collapses into the chair again. ‘You have to help me’ Me:’no, I don’t.’” Speak is a novel written by Laurie Halse Anderson about traumatized 9th grader with a dark past. People having a voice for themselves. In speak Melinda is never really has her own voice except in her art. But one time when she really has her own voice is when she said “no”…

Melinda’s surrounding of people creates her fears of speaking out about her rape case. At the beginning of Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, the freshmen are gathered up together in the auditorium, where she see’s her ex-best friend, Rachel, “This was the girl who suffered through Brownies with me... If there is anyone in the entire galaxy I am dying to tell what really happened, it’s Rachel. My throat burns. Her eyes meet mine for a second. “I hate you,” she mouths silently. She turns her back to…

about what happened to her and why she called the cops at a party with lots of high schoolers that summer. Her ex-best friend Rachel, who understood everything about Melinda, now hates her, and Melinda feels like an outcast. In the book Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson, Melinda randomly chooses trees as her art project for the whole year, and is expected to find herself; with no idea how to bring her trees to life, she faces many struggles and different media, and as she begins to grow her trees…

it changes the course of a person’s plans. The classic novel The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne shows a prime example of how one’s mistake, set in the seventeenth century, alters a woman 's life dramatically. The contemporary novel Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson also take a look at what happens to a high school girl after one unfortunate night. Set in a community of Puritans during the mid seventeenth century, Hester Prynne of The Scarlet Letter has committed adultery. During the…