Character Analysis: Speak By Laurie Halse Anderson

Speak Essay In the book Speak written by Laurie Halse Anderson, Psychological forces such as depression, anxiety, trauma and fear can control people's emotions and actions, rather than themselves controlling their emotions and actions. In the book Speak, Melinda faces a major trauma causing her emotions to control her life instead of her controlling her own life such as depression controls her emotions, fear controls her actions and anxiety controls her social life. The book speak is about a young girl who went to a party got drunk and was raped by a guy. She never told anyone about what happened and bottled her emotions pushing her into a depression. She was forced to face high school where the guy who raped her went to school, he dated her ex-friends and was always around her somehow. Melinda lost a lot of peers after she called the cops on the party and she also lost “friends” for being depressed as her “friend’ heather told her “...You are the most depressed person I’ve ever met…(105 Anderson)” The setting of the story is at Merryweather high in New york. This story's narrator is Melinda as this was written in the first person. The Protagonist in the story is Melinda, she is a different kind of person now than when she used to be. In her youth, she was a free
Melinda, in the end, tells someone and I would think she got justice, but that night scared her for life, she wasn't able to function for so long since she was trapping her emotions inside