Her
Cover(Revised)
(Written week of
March 19th)
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.
This book has a great connection to
life as well. What happened to Melinda, her being judged by her looks and her
grades, it happens every day in places all over the world. Melinda’s character
can really connect to people who have been bullied, judged and/or raped because
sadly in the world that we know today it is not uncommon for these horrible
things to happen. The connection between the real world and Melinda’s situation
in this book can also send off a great message to people all over the world as
well as gives them the ability to open their eyes to the idea of bullying and
rape in general.
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment