Depression

The book Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson is a very moody book and can probably make you change your mind about some things after reading it. The book is about a freshman girl that is had a party during the vacation before school. She invites all her friends and they party off, but who knew that a friend would rape her in the woods. This scene would have a big impact for the rest of her life, causing many problems throughout her life. Thus causing her to have an extremely complicated life at an young age.

I think the author titled this book Speak was because throughout the book, Melinda didn't speak out for herself. She let others accuse her and she just didn't speak aloud and clarify the situation. I think the message the author is trying to get to us is that whenever there is a situation that is clearly a misunderstanding, then you should speak up for yourself.

Telling everyone that you got raped is a really hard thing to say, it would embarrass you in front of everyone else.

This one issue caused many issues to Melinda throughout the book. For example, Melinda falls into depression later on in the book. Depression is a serious condition and may kill you due to stress. Depression usually occurs when a loved one dies suddenly, but she just falls into depression because she got raped. Speaking up would help clarify all this and wouldn't have caused all this.

Another is that she's losing her friends, friends is a really important aspect of education life. Friends are there to help one another. Without friends, this is probably one of the reasons why she is in depression. Since at the time of the rape, she called 911 because she was getting raped. But then when the police arrived, they saw that the some of the people that Melinda invited were drinking when they were underage. Her friends thought that she did it on purpose trying to get some of them arrested, thus losing all her friends. Even worse, her friends treat her badly. They insult her and throws food in her face when they don't know the truth.

She also fails most of her classes, except for art because the teacher is really nice and encourages everybody. The teacher understands Melinda's pain and tells her to show it through art. I thought that this was really interesting because my old art teacher use to tell us this too. Who can you blame when you're in depression and you're failing class? Everyone would fail class, this is why depression is such a big issue. It affects people in a lot of ways, such as changing things they do daily.

I really pity Melinda because even in school, she feels anxious sometimes and nervous. She hides in an abandoned janitor's closet where she just sleeps throughout the school day. She has to go through all that, probably when she got raped, the nightmare still haunts her. I really like the ending of the book, because she finally had the courage to tell her art teacher what really happened to her. She also decided that she would move on with life which was a really good thing.

In conclusion, this book was a really great book to read. I really enjoyed it and it got me to think more about bullying in our world. Many people bully without realizing it which is a bad thing. Maybe if she reported her situation to the police earlier, then she wouldn't have had gone through such a harsh life. If I was Melinda, I would've probably not tolerated all that bullying and insulting. I would probably tell my friends what really happened, and if they keep bullying me, I would punch her and shake some sense into her.