Speak

Danielle Jasinski
Ms. Johann
LA Hour 4
December 17, 2009
Speak Essay
To Speak or NOT

It’s your first day of freshman year. Most girls are excited, jumping up and down and freaking out about how they look. For Melinda that’s a whole different story. She didn’t even want to go to school. She thought it would be her best year of her life. Having tons of friends, flirting with guys, going shopping, but that all changed from just one night at a high school party. Her life has completely different now. No one even talks to her anymore, because of one night of fun. Being raped is a very devastation thing. It really screws up people. Makes them think so much differently of themselves. In the book “Speak” by Laurie Halse Anderson this shows what can happen to a girl from being raped. Rape is such a horrible thing and needs to stop or else many girls lives are going to be ruined because of it.
People hear the word “rape” and they don’t really think much about it. Yes, it’s bad but they don’t think past it and see what it does to people. In the book “Speak” It shows that Melinda’s life has fallen apart, and she has become depressed. Depression is a very serious matter, it really effects people’s lives. When your depressed you really don’t feel anything. That’s why many girls cut themselves, go bulimic , or even try to kill themselves. Melinda in the book did cut herself, it wasn’t as bad as some girls but it could lead to something worse.
In the book Melinda’s life was never good, that’s why I believe this book was a tragedy. It starts off with Melinda losing all her friends, right there is a big downfall for her. Losing all your friends must be tough, no one would want that to happen to them. Then when the first day of school comes around Melinda has no one, and everyone just makes fun of her. Girls are very sensitive, and for Melinda being made fun of for something that happened to you is worse. The incident that happened over the summer, shut down Melinda and she doesn’t speak out anymore. She’s a no body when it comes to high school. Then in the end, when people find out about Melinda, everything changes. Andy the boy who raped her, is now hated, but still although no one hates her anymore she doesn’t fully have her friends back.
In “Speak” Melinda is the main character. She really relates to many girls in real life. This incident happens a lot to many girls of different ages. And how their personalities change and the way they act just like Melinda too. For some girls getting rape actually will lead up to killing themselves. They feel so sick and disgusted by themselves that they feel no need to live anymore. Melinda wasn’t as close as other girls to killing herself, but as time lead on it could have ended up like that. Although Melinda felt as if her life wasn’t going down the drain, this can change. Just like it has happened. As people found out the real story of her life, she wasn’t hated anymore and she can know talk to people about getting raped.
If you were to look up how many girls kill themselves from being raped, it would show hundreds of thousands girls dying because of it. That’s so many lives that had been taken away because of perverted men and women. So many more lives are going to be lost if rape keeps happening, that’s why men need to stop themselves from doing this, so girls will stop killing themselves.