Mascot Identity

            Speak is full of symbolism. There are so many symbols present that even if I was just reading it for “fun,” I still would have had to take note of them. One symbol in particular that kept jumping out at me was the mascot of the school. The mascot changes four times: Trojans, to Blue Devils, Tigers, Wombats, and Hornets, and an attempt to change again, which was never done. This correlates to Melinda’s lack of identity in her freshman year.

            A mascot seems like such a random thing to incorporate into a book about a young lady who does not care about having pride in her school. Melinda’s sarcastic commentary about the constant mascot changes show that she really does lack any sense of pride in her school; she just enjoys seeing the cheerleaders suffer as they are forced to come up with new cheers (70). However, a mascot can mean so much more than pride in your school. Whether or not you cared in high school, or even college, your school’s mascot is a part of how you are identified.

            Melinda has been suffering from a lack of identity all school year, or even further back than that, she just wasn’t aware of it. Melinda had always been a conglomeration of her friends and now that she doesn’t have that group of friends, her lack of an identity is thrown into the light. The changing of the mascot helps to show the lack of a cohesive identity which one could feel comfortable about.

            Interestingly enough, as Melinda starts to turn her life around, in the fourth grading period, the school sticks to one mascot. There is outrage from parents about the hornet mascot, but the student council starts a petition to keep it because of “the psychological harm we have all suffered from this year’s lack of identity” (141). I don’t know how much more blatant Anderson can make this claim. The school is able to solidify a mascot just as Melinda is able to gain strength and find her voice, which is on the way to helping her develop her own identity.

            As Melinda’s identity becomes more clouded for the reader, the school changes its mascot. We start off with a character that is fairly one-dimensional. Her only characteristic is how much she hates school. As we learn more about Melinda, we see that she is actually a very complex character and that she is hiding a lot of pain. While we are learning this, the school has three different mascots. The amount of identity and change we learn about for Melinda correlates to the changing school mascot. As Melinda begins to find her identity, so does the school.