See No Evil, Speak No Evil - Taylor Simmons (Speak)
If you didn’t see something, did it really happen? If you
can’t say something, does that thought really count? In Speak, Melinda Sordino spends her freshman year of high school
seeing no evil and speaking no evil. She is an outcast, she hides herself from
evil in an old janitor’s closet while she is rejected by her peers for calling
the police at a party over the summer where she was raped. Melinda is stunned
by the fear and shame of her rape, leaving her physically unable to speak, her “throat
squeezes shut,” leaving her unable to talk about this evil lifechanging event
(28). Melinda bites her lips so much that they bleed (5,17) and she even
imagines biting her lips so hard that she will swallow herself (39). After this
rape, Melinda seems to be in denial of who she really is or was, it is almost
as though she can remember the girl she was once, but the pain from her rape
has taken over her entire world. Melinda needs help, and throughout the story
she finds solitude in being alone, where she is most comfortable but throughout
the novel, we can see Melinda’s transformation.
Throughout this story, I noticed a
transformation in Melinda through her art. Her art class and Mr. Freeman seem
to be the two main factors that help Melinda overcome this dark place that she
is in, she even describes art class as a “dream” (9). The rape at the party, and the beginning of
the school year is the kickstart for Melinda’s depression. The rape being the
main factor, and her realizing that she no longer has friends or anyone to
confide in is another factor. The rape changes her so much physically and
mentally that she does not even recognize her own self, “two muddy circles
under black-dash eyebrows, piggy-nose nostrils, and a chewed-up horror of a
mouth…I can’t stop biting my lips” (17). The trauma from this rape changes
Melinda so drastically that she cannot even look at herself. She hides the
mirror in her room (17) and when she encounters Heather in the bathroom, she
looks at herself and washes it until she sees “nothing” (45), symbolizing how
she feel on the inside, like nothing.
Melinda’s tree project in her art
class is another symbol of her transformation throughout the story. The tree is
Melinda. When Melinda is first assigned the tree, she struggles with drawing
it, she has no clue where to start or how to draw a tree but Mr. Freeman states
that the tree is Melinda’s “destiny” (12). As Melinda’s artwork grows and
develops, as she begins to formulate new ideas for her tree, we can also see
how she grows as a person. Her failed attempts at creating the perfect tree
relate to the bad in her life and when Melinda is finally able to speak, her
tree finds life, “my tree is definitely breathing…” (196). The color birds she
adds to her artwork at the end of the story represent the new-found light she
has found in her life after speaking up, “…the birds bloom in the light, their
feathers expanding promise” (197). Melinda’s final tree represents her finally
being able to talk about what she has been through in her life.
This novel is certainly not an easy
read is this is an important book. I think that Laurie Halse Anderson did a great
job with this story as it represents the importance of speaking up about
incidents such as rape and the impact it can have on adolescents.
I liked your article Taylor! I enjoy how you compare Melinda directly to the tree. I also wrote about Melinda and the tree, but I never directly compared her to the tree, only to her emotional state. I like how many quotes you took and examples directly from the book.
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