Speak (novel)

Speak
Book cover of Platinum edition
Author(s)	Laurie Halse Anderson
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Fiction
Publisher	Farrar Straus Giroux
Publication date	October 1999
Media type	Hardback and paperback
Pages	197 pp (first edition, hardback)
ISBN	ISBN 0374371520 (first edition, hardback)
OCLC Number	40298254
Dewey Decimal	[Fic] 21
LC Classification	PZ7.A54385 Sp 1999

Speak is a 1999 novel by Laurie Halse Anderson about a girl named Melinda Sordino who is an outcast as a high school freshman. It was made into a film of the same name in 2004. The novel was a New York Times and Publishers Weekly bestseller.^{[citation needed]} Speak was also named a Printz Honor book in 2000.

Plot summary

A few weeks before her freshman year of high school, Melinda Sordino and her friend Rachel are invited to a high school party. There, Melinda gets drunk and meets a senior, Andy Evans, who takes her to a secluded part of the woods and rapes her. She calls 911 and the police break up the party for underage drinking, arresting some of the kids. Numb and alone, Melinda walks miles home to an empty house. In the following weeks she tells no one what happened, and as a result, no one realizes she was raped. She becomes depressed. All her friends and the party-goers are angry with her for getting them into trouble, and ostracize her once school starts. Desperate for friends, Melinda becomes friendly with a new girl, Heather, who clings to Melinda only to abandon her when she gets the chance to join a popular clique.

As Melinda's depression worsens, she begins to skip school, withdraws from her parents, and aspires to do nothing more than take a nap. She creates a makeshift hide-away in an abandoned janitor's closet at school, where she sleeps during the day or hides when she is feeling anxious. Her only solace is art class, taught by Mr. Freeman, who encourages his students to express themselves. Over time, Mr. Freeman seems to have an impact on Melinda's view of things. For most of the book, Melinda denies that she was ever raped, blaming herself for being "drunk and stupid."

When the school year is almost over, she befriends David Petrakis, her lab partner. She also begins to question her feelings about him. When her former best friend, Rachel, begins dating Andy, Melinda feels obligated to tell her about the rape. The response is intense hostility, but eventually Rachel acknowledges the truth and dumps Andy.

As the school year comes to a close, Melinda returns to her janitor's closet to gather some things she left inside it. Andy confronts her, accusing her of fabricating the assault, saying that she consented and is jealous of his relationship with Rachel. When he attempts to rape her again, she screams, breaks a mirror, and she holds a shard of glass up to his neck, saying, "I said no." Fortunately, Melinda's former friend Nicole and the lacrosse team hear her scream from the closet and come to her aid. On the last day of school, Melinda stays late to finish her art project and finishes the course with an A+, though she is facing summer school for failing the rest of her classes. As the student body hears the story and realizes the truth about what happened at the party, Melinda goes from social pariah to something of a hero. Mr. Freeman prompts her to tell him her story, helping Melinda to finally come to terms with what happened to her and move on with her life.

Characters

• Melinda Sordino – The main protagonist and narrator of Speak. She is a young teenager who considers herself an outcast, and is depressed and lonely. After being raped by Andy Evans at a party, she becomes secluded from her friends and for the most part ceases speaking.

• Andy Evans – The main antagonist of the book, Andy is a popular senior who attends Merryweather High School. He rapes freshman Melinda at a party. Andy is also known as "Andy Beast" and "IT" in Melinda's thoughts.

• Heather Billings – A new girl from Ohio at the beginning of the school year. She is very social and at first befriends Melinda, but later ditches her for a clique called "The Marthas".

• Ivy – Melinda's friend. They grow apart after the party, but are reunited through their art class.

• Rachel Bruin (Rachelle) – Melinda's former best friend, she attends Merryweather High School. She is popular, uptight, selfish, and a poor friend. Rachel stopped being her friend after Melinda called 9-1-1 at a party, not knowing that she had been raped. She later begins dating Andy Evans. Near the end, you could assume Melinda and her became friends again.

• David Petrakis – Melinda's highly academic lab partner. He develops feelings for Melinda, but never expresses them. He also argues his rights.

• Mr. Freeman – Melinda's overly enthusiastic art teacher. He is the only adult who understands Melinda's pain, and encourages her to express it in her art. He is very open with things and in the end of the story he helps Melinda find her way to speaking again.

Censorship

Due to its controversial subject matter, Speak has often been challenged. In the Platinum Edition of Speak, released 2006, Anderson spoke out against censorship. In material printed at the end of the novel, following an interview regarding the content of the book, Anderson wrote:

But censoring books that deal with difficult, adolescent issues does not protect anybody. Quite the opposite. It leaves kids in the darkness and makes them vulnerable. Censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance. Our children cannot afford to have the truth of the world withheld from them.

Film adaptation

The story was adapted into a 2004 film, which was directed by Jessica Sharzer and starred Kristen Stewart as Melinda Sordino.

Translations

The book has been translated into Mandarin and is sold in Taiwan under the title of I No Longer Keep Quiet (我不再沉默), and into Dutch by Hans Heesen with the name Silent as a Grave ("Zwijg als het graf"). It was also translated into Spanish with the name ¡Habla! which could be translated as "Talk!" (referring to either a male or female) and into German with the name Sprich! which is the command "Speak!". The book is also translated in Finnish with the name Lukossa. The word itself is hard to translate in English, but it means quite like "Locked in" or "locked." The book was translated into Hungarian with the title Hadd mondjam el, which means "Let Me Tell You".

Interpretation

According to Jennifer Hubert, Melinda is mute out of fear, since she calls the police about the party at the end of the summer. Her muteness also stands in for her overall difficulty communicating with her parents. In the novel, Melinda says, "My throat is always sore, my lips raw...Every time I try to talk to my parents or a teacher, I sputter or freeze.... It's like I have some kind of spastic laryngitis."

Reception

Publisher Weekly calls it "stunning".

References

• Anderson, Laurie Halse (October 1999). Speak (1st ed.). Farrar Straus Giroux. ISBN 0374371520.