Speak

You’re walking down the hallway on the first day of high school all alone. None of your friends will talk to you and everyone is staring. As you walk by, everyone starts to whisper about you. Melinda in the novel Speak endures this every day. In the novel Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, two huge symbols are the tree and Melinda’s grades.
First of all, a big symbol in the book was the tree. On the first day of art class, the teacher gave his students a word. Melinda’s word was tree. Throught the book, Melinda drew and sculpted trees. In the beginning of the book, on page 30 Melinda says “For a solid week, ever since the pep rally, I’ve been drawing trees hit by lightning." That symbolizes her life, before the party, and then after the party when all of the sudden her friends started to hate her. Her trees also change in the middle of the book. On page 147 she draws a willow tree drooping into the water. That symbolizes her life being bad, but not as bad as getting shocked by lightning. She is getting used to people not liking her, but her life is still really bad. Her last tree is an ordinary normal tree, and her life is getting to be back to normal. The trees that Melina draws and sculpts are huge symbols in the book.
Melinda’s favorite class was art when she got to express herself by drawing and sculpting trees; art was also her only A on her report card. Over time Melinda's grade have changed. On her first report card, she only had one grade lower than a C and that was lunch. At that time life was still pretty bad for her, but it would just get worse from there. On her next report card her grades were slowly decreasing. On her last report card her grades plummeted. She only had one grade higher than a D. She had an A, but that was in a class where the teacher only gave out A's. She had four F's and that was when her life was the worst. She skips a lot of her classes, and sits in her closet. That is when her parents are fighting the most too. On her last two report cards she has really bad grades in clothes. She gave herself that grade becuase her clothes are really bad. This is what she said about her clothes "With an extra- large sweatshirt over the top you can hardly tell they are Efferts Jeans." That shows that she really hates her clothes but she can't afford anything else. Melinda is not confident about herself. She doesn’t like the way she dresses or how people treat her. Her life is so bad she just lets her grades go down the drain.
The novel Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson has two huge symbols, that are the tree and Melinda’s grades. The purpose of the book is to speak up. Her friends didn’t know what happened at the party, and when she finally told them they forgave her for calling the cops. Speak is an inspiring story about a girl whose life is terrible, but when she speaks the truth her life gets better.