Throughout life, everyone is forced to have hard conversations. In the novel Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, Melinda Sordino struggles to have that hard conversation and bear he
heavy secret. At a party the previous summer, Melinda called the police after she was raped by another student, marking her a social outcast as she enters her freshman year at high school. For the duration of the book, Melinda struggles to come to terms with her experience and gain back some old friends who still hold a grudge for the night of the party. She also attempts to complete her yearlong art assignment that involves creating a piece of work centered on a tree. In the text, the author creates many symbols that help to illustrate Melinda’s isolation and growth.
Exemplifying the plethora of symbols in this text is the janitor’s closet at school. On page 25 of the book, Melinda stumbles upon the closet, saying, “This closet is abandoned-it has no purpose, no name. It is the perfect place for me.” She personalizes her new sanctuary and goes there often to escape the horrors of her school, putting up drawings from art class or favorite quotes to make it even more like her. She describes the closet as having no purpose or name. Melinda feels that she has no purpose and no name because she is hated by everyone. The janitors abandon the closet, like Melinda was abandoned by all of her friends. The closet is remote and quiet, allowing Melinda to escape from her worries as she relates to its isolation and it’s loneliness. This illustrates how the closet is a symbol, like others, of Melinda herself. However, the closet is not only a symbol of Melinda, it is also a symbol of her hiding the secret of her rape. On page 50, Melinda writes, “The first thing to go is the mirror. It is screwed to the wall, so I cover it with a poster of Maya Angelou.” This is when she discovers the closet and is making it her own. Her deciding to remove the mirror shows that she is unwilling to face herself or her past, hiding from her own reflection. This happens inside the closet, which is a popular image used to represent a big secret being kept, to illustrate that Melinda hides from herself and others in both the literal closet and in the emotional closet in which she cages up her story. Over all, the janitor’s closet is a major symbol in Speak.
Another symbol, maybe the most important in the whole book, is the symbol of the tree that Melinda works on creating throughout her school year. In the text, Melinda’s art teacher challenges them to work on creating artwork centered around one object that they pick at random out of a hat. Melinda chooses a tree, and struggles to create an interesting and lively work of art until the end of the book. Mr. Freeman, Melinda’s art teacher, tells her, “you are getting better at this, but it's not good enough. This looks like a tree, but it is an average, ordinary, everyday, boring tree. Breathe life into it. Make it bend - trees are flexible, so they don't snap. Scar it, give it a twisted branch - perfect trees don't exist. Nothing is perfect. Flaws are interesting. Be the tree.” In the beginning of the book, Melinda struggles to create the tree as she struggles to come to terms with her violent violation over the summer. She becomes introverted, quiet, just and uninteresting, sad, and wilting as the trees she draws. The tree symbolizes her growth and progress in learning to deal and tell others her story. At the end of the book, Melinda begins to clean out her janitors closet when Andy, her rapist, comes in and attacks her once more. The lacrosse team hears her screams and goes for help, finally speaking about her experience. After the encounter, she finishes her tree painting in art class, “My tree needs something. I walk over to the desk and take a piece of brown paper and a finger of chalk. Mr. Freeman talks about art galleries and I practice birds — little dashes of color on paper. It's awkward with the bandage on my hand, but I keep trying. I draw them without thinking — flight, flight, feather, wing. Water drips on the paper and the birds bloom in the light, their feathers expanding promise.” As shown in this quote, after telling her peers about her experience and accepting that it happened, Melinda is able to finally create a tree she is proud of. Therefore, the tree is a symbol of Melinda’s journey, as like her it is only able to grow and be beautiful is when it is fed with acceptance. Melinda is popular and happier than she ever was that year after she spoke about the violent encounter she had that summer, she blossoms and buds like a tree in spring, as opposed to when she was as immobile as a stump when she kept her story inside her heart. Thusly, the tree symbolizes Melinda’s growth and journey.
Melinda’s story is aided by the use of many symbols that help us to better understand her pain and her struggle to accept what happened to her. While it certainly seemed to her that she was, Melinda is one of many young rape victims around the world. Unfortunately, however, most of these victims’ stories never see the light of day. As we see in this book, often survivors of sexual abuse never discuss their tragedy for fear of further alienation or shame. Perhaps this novel has inspired, or will inspire both victims to accept their encounters and others to treat them with love and not skepticism or cruelty.
