Speak

In Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak symbolism appears throughout this novel, especially the symbol of the tree.  While one can say that Anderson keeps Melinda, the main character, connected through nature this way, she goes far beyond that.   Trees are part of Melinda’s daily life, from the tree in her yard to the art project where she must draw a tree to her memory of being raped and seeing the stars through the pine trees.  Melinda’s recovery from her rape coincides in many ways of a tree’s yearly cycle, in the summer it is full of life (August prior to Melinda’s rape), in the fall the leaves dies, (after the rape), winter is when most trees are dormant (Melinda’s hardest season filled with depression), spring where the leaves are slowly coming back to life (Melinda’s acceptance that she was raped and her deciding to take her life back) and finally circling back around to summer (where Melinda gains back her voice). 

Throughout Melinda’s school year she is plagued with attempting to draw a tree filled with emotion for her art project.  While on the surface this project is simply for school, it allows Melinda to look inward and express what she’s feeling.  From attempting to make a pine tree out of a linoleum block where she cuts herself, to painting a tree so dark that it appears to be almost dead, the cubist tree which directly correlates with how she feels about herself, focusing on the roots of the tree (the “root” of her problem) and finally seeing the sick tree in her yard that must have the dead branches cut off in order to save the tree.  Melinda soaks what she has experienced with these trees and decides ultimately that like a tree, she must “cut off the dead branches” in order to survive and gain back control of her life.  She begins this by going back to the farm where she was raped and touching the trees, where she searches for the answer to “how to come back to life after my long undersnow dormancy” (188).  She goes on to way that she doesn’t feel like hiding anymore, as it feels like summer- life.

At the end of the school year Melinda’s second attack by Andy Evans gave her the ability to finally gain back her voice.  While in the end she had physical wounds, her voice was heard and she was able to tell her attacker no, which is something more powerful than any other word to a rape victim.  Afterwards, Melinda finishes the school year and is determined to get her tree right.  She spends the last day of school finishing her project where she sees that her tree is breathing and “the new growth is the best part” (198) and makes the connection that just like the tree she can grow from the dead parts.