Speak or Lack There of

In the novel Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, it has many aspects of symbolism that express many types of themes throughout the book, but the one that stands out more than any other is Melinda's art that she uses to project or show lack her very own emotion, art that she uses to save her life, and of course art that gives her back her voice.

Right away at the beginning of the semester Mr. Freeman assigns Melinda to create a piece of art using trees. "-by the end of the year, you must figure out how to makes your object say something, express an emotion, speak to every person who looks at it" (pg 12), in a way this is foreshadowing because she does not speak to anyone but will she convey her emotions to the audience she so desperately needs to hear her?

One of her first art pieces Melinda creates is a turkey made out of bones with a Barbie doll head on the inside of it. When Mr. Freeman sees the art he says, "Excellent, excellent. What does this say to you?" (pg 63). Of course, she is still not speaking at this point and Mr. Freeman rambles on about how it is about a girl in a bad holiday. What he mistakenly doesn't see is that Melinda is trying to speak through her art, he just doesn't know it yet. With the turkey being made out of bones it is representing the emptiness or how uncomfortable she is in her own skin, the Barbie doll head is herself trapped on the inside, hiding.

Next, Melinda is introduced to Picasso and his type of painting which is Cubism. "Seeing beyond what is on the surface. Moving both eyes and a nose to the side of the face. Dicing bodies... and rearranging them so that you have to really see them to see them " (pg 119), Melinda doesn't know it but she is talking about her own art when describing cubism, you have to rearrange things in order to see the real stuff. That you really have to dig deep to find the meaning behind her art.

Although you might not see at first glance but Melinda's art ultimately saves her life and gives her a voice. When Andy has her locked in the janitor closet she still has barely a voice, but when she grabs her turkey sculpture and breaks the mirror, it is here where the tables are turned. Melinda says, "I see the stubble on his chin, a fleck of white in the corner of his mouth. His lips are paralyzed. He cannot speak. That's good enough" (pg 195), it is here that she finally gains the courage to defeat the silence. She used her art to help her from a second rape, and it crushes all the emptiness she once had.

Finally, when Melinda is turning in her last art project Mr. Freeman says, "You get an A+. You worked hard at this " (pg 198), which he is right, she did work hard to overcome her silence and fight back. This shows that all her work and progress was for something and that she can finally start to heal.


Although there is not a lot of speaking going on in the book Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, Melinda creates art that shows readers that she is trying to show herself through her art. Not only does her art show her emotion, the art that Melinda has created saves her from a second attack from Andy and also gives her her voice back once and for all.