Her Cover

Her Cover

Author’s Note: I am writing this piece to show my knowledge of analysis, by analyzing the message in the book Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson. I hope you enjoy this piece as much as I have enjoyed writing it.

            There’s an old saying that goes, “don’t judge a book by its cover,” this is also the message to the book Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson. Speak is about a girl named Melinda who is raped at an end-of-summer party , but as far as the kids at school know, Melinda only called the cops. That is not nearly half of the story. Due to the fact of Melinda calling the cops, she loses her friends, her reputation and herself. She began dressing in darker colored clothes and stopped caring about her grades or school at all; therefore people began to judge her by her cover. Thus, the message of this story is not to judge people by their cover.

            Along with my belief that this is the message of this story there is also a lot of “text evidence” that supports this as well. For example, one of the more powerful pieces of evidence supporting this; is how the kids at school treat Melinda as if it was her fault that some of them go arrested for drinking or smoking at this party –or in some cases for even being at this party. They do so by picking Melinda out of a crowd and deliberately yelling at Melinda for calling the cops. This occurred more than once in this story, one of these times was when Melinda was at a high school pep rally and the sister of one of the boys who had been arrested was sitting behind her. She recognized Melinda and said to her “Your Melinda Sordino,” then Melinda turned around to face her and the girl finished, “My brother got arrested at that party. He got fired because of the arrest. I can’t believe you did that.” She then went on to call Melinda a not so nice name. Once again this is a great example of why this is the message of this story because even though that girl didn’t even know Melinda she deliberately made an effort to put Melinda down about what she did, without even knowing why Melinda called the cops. But there are many more examples of why this is the main message to this story.

            Another great example of the main message of this story is how Melinda’s parents treat her toward her change of attitude; but instead of asking Melinda what happened to Melinda to make her suddenly start acting like this they make up all of these ridicules accusations. A highly factual example of this is when Melinda’s parents noticed that Melinda was slipping up on her grades. Instead of her parents asking if anything had happened to Melinda to make her act this way, her parents began to yell at Melinda, telling her to straighten up her act. By looking at the way Melinda was dressing and acting lately; her parents figured it was all just a faze. Once again someone had judged Melinda by her cover and neglected to ask their daughter what was wrong.

            After realizing what had happened to Melinda and seeing the way people judged her, it was not hard to realize that the main message of this story was to not judge people by their cover. I can take away a lot from this valuable message and take away something to use throughout my daily life. This book really taught me a lot about the lessons life has to give us.  Thanks to this story, I can now realize the simple yet greatly effecting causes of judging people by their cover, and for that I am forever thankful.