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There is a lot of symbolism in the novel and some is quite obvious. The big one is the tree. The tree that Melinda tries to build in art is not coming to life and that symbolizes Melinda and how she can’t face life. The dieing tree in her yard is like how her life is all falling apart and how she is dieing inside. Melinda was also raped in an area around trees.
Her scabby lips are another type of symbolism and they symbolize her rape.When she looks in the mirror she doesn’t like what she see’s. The janitors closet is a place that she found to be alone and hide.She feels safe when she is in there by herself.
The changing of the mascots symbolize that she doesn’t really know who she is and doesn’t really fit with anyone. All her friends are in there own little cliques and she doesn’t really go with any of them.
When asked to describe symbolisms in our novel of “Speak”, we can’t help thinking of that trees are playing a significant role and seems to be the main symbolism throughout the whole story. However, I guess either our group number or Mrs. Grant must be getting tired to talk about trees or even listen to it. So I’m going to discuss other symbolisms which might be quite important for this novel after our book club today. Foremost, Rajvir make an excellent proposal that Melinda’s last name which is Sordino means quiet or something related to that in other language. I was quite confused at that time owing to I didn’t know much about that and never realized it. Therefore, I Google her last name and it says: “Sordino is an Italian word that can be translated as “mute” or “deaf”.” So obviously, author tried to use her name in order to show her personality of quiet and shape the whole story into a right track. Another symbolism I would like to say is Melinda’s closet. As we all know the meaning of closet, it must be a place that nobody can go into but yourself, yet that is a place where Melinda prefer to go there all the time through the whole plot. Take what she said in the novel as an example: “closet is a good thing, a quiet place that helps me hold these thoughts inside my head where no one can hear them. “ To be more specific, that is to say Melinda is an autistic girl and never likes to share her feelings to others which is exactly what the author shape her to be that kind of character. Certainly, there must be lots of different variety of symbolism throughout whole novel, but I would say these two give me a better deepen understanding of our novel “Speak”.
There is a lot of symbolism in this novel. Today, we find numerous symbols in order to represent different emotions and the stories behind the characters, and the tree and lips are the most impressive to me. Primarily, the most obvious symbol to represent Melinda’s grief emotion is the tree. The tree symbolizes death in the story since Melinda is dying inside by hiding the details of her rape. Sometimes Melinda describes the tree with a sorrowful illustration. Whenever Melinda tries to create her tree in art class, she struggles. Her tree lacks dimension; as the quote said, she “can’t bring it to life.” I think it could also be another indication is Melinda was trying to tell her rape to others but she did not know how to tell. Additionally, I consider the lip also has a meaning. After Andy raped Melinda, Melinda starts to bite her lip occasionally. It may be point out that Melinda is scared to tell the truth or faces to interact with people.
Moreover, the lip, of course has a great connection with the story I guess. I believe the lip means Melinda does not talk to people. Melinda’s mouth is an important symbol. Her lips are cut by those students. Throughout the novel, Melinda picks her cracked lips and causing them to bleed. When I was reading this plot, my heart was also stressed. I reckon that she is afraid of those students, her teachers and her parents. Melinda’s lips represent her inability to speak up about the rape. Since we experience what high school dilemmas like cliques, popularity contests, and struggles with identity, Speak is really a great novel, and it really makes me can think things deeply after I finished Melinda’s misfortune.
it is very interesting that what Annie “googled”, I was really surprised and is still surprised to see that Melinda’s last name actually means “mute” in Italian. (I can see the author’s deep insight.) For the symbolism, there are many symbols that are existed in this novel. Some symbols such as Trees are very vivid symbols to us, but some symbols in this novel are not obvious as the trees. I will discuss some of obvious and hidden symbols that are presented in this novel since Rajvir mentioned most symbols in this novel. For the trees, in general, the trees represent life and prosperity ; However in this novel , the author uses the trees to symbolize the death that symbolize Melilnda’s dying inner mind due to her excessive effort to hide her rape.
It is evident that while she tries to draw trees , she struggles and fails that she “can’t bring it[the tree] to life.” Also another symbol in this novel is leaves. The leaves on the tree in this novel symbolize Melinda that even though she feels dead inside , but she wants and remains and tries to make her safe as if the leaves on the tree hold on the tree to remain safe. These two symbols , trees and leaves, symbolize Melinda really well. We all can see the trees represent Melinda and her mind , but it is difficult to find the leaves on the tree symbolize Melinda and her mind too.
There are a number of symbolisms through the whole novel. First of all, the most obvious one is the tree, it illustrates based on two different statements. Certainly, Melinda turns the art assignment with a tree, which one explains her situation, a dying, and illness tress. Although it has talked about several times already, I believe. In addition, I found out there is a frame shows the symbolism more by comparison with her assignment. (It has already talked about in #2, it also works here.) The condition of the tree is a kind of symbol of hers, which holds considerable illness. However, the tree cannot enough demonstrates the symbol of the novel. From my own opinion, lip is a symbolism to the novel because since Melinda always bites her lip until it bloody. It happened to her when she suffers classmates’ laughing, ex-friends’ indifferent looking, she does not want to against them even Melinda dislikes herself. Furthermore, the paper is the symbolism of the novel, on account of Melinda expresses her emotion on the paper instead of the mouth. Through the hints from Rajvi during the discussion, the mirror and her name are the symbolisms. Melinda Sordino, I never know this name before and even the Microsoft World does not. When I try to google it, it defines in “a mute for a violin”. The name of Melinda really explains to readers her characteristic anyway. Finally, the mirror shows Melinda is great dislike herself, it is shown when she look at her reflected on the mirror. The last but not least, the symbolisms do reflect the characteristic of Melinda, and also it display the point of view to the main character by the author, because it’s a smooth method to shape the novel and the main character.
As I slowly read through the novel “Speak”, bit by bit, I found plenty of symbols that have a great impact on the protagonist, Melinda. However, Anderson uses many memorable symbols such as trees, lips,and snow. The top two symbols from the novel are trees and lips although some of my group members have already written about it. It is true that trees and lips are the most significant symbols in this novel. As my opinion, trees are symbolic of life and strength;lips symbolize communication and the unspeakable pain within Melinda. Melinda is like the oak tree in her front yard “that tree is sick”, she is like the powerless and dying oak tree which nobody cares about. Every time when she tried to move on or grow up, she think about the night of the party, the unspeakable pain, and then she back down again. Moreover, it took her a lot of time to finally realized that the rape wasn’t her fault. Now, she is willing to talk about the unspeakable pain and she gathers all her strength back.
Room 209's Book Clubs
April 20, 2010 at 5:46 pm
There is a lot of symbolism in the novel and some is quite obvious. The big one is the tree. The tree that Melinda tries to build in art is not coming to life and that symbolizes Melinda and how she can’t face life. The dieing tree in her yard is like how her life is all falling apart and how she is dieing inside. Melinda was also raped in an area around trees.
Her scabby lips are another type of symbolism and they symbolize her rape.When she looks in the mirror she doesn’t like what she see’s. The janitors closet is a place that she found to be alone and hide.She feels safe when she is in there by herself.
The changing of the mascots symbolize that she doesn’t really know who she is and doesn’t really fit with anyone. All her friends are in there own little cliques and she doesn’t really go with any of them.
April 20, 2010 at 6:16 pm
When asked to describe symbolisms in our novel of “Speak”, we can’t help thinking of that trees are playing a significant role and seems to be the main symbolism throughout the whole story. However, I guess either our group number or Mrs. Grant must be getting tired to talk about trees or even listen to it. So I’m going to discuss other symbolisms which might be quite important for this novel after our book club today. Foremost, Rajvir make an excellent proposal that Melinda’s last name which is Sordino means quiet or something related to that in other language. I was quite confused at that time owing to I didn’t know much about that and never realized it. Therefore, I Google her last name and it says: “Sordino is an Italian word that can be translated as “mute” or “deaf”.” So obviously, author tried to use her name in order to show her personality of quiet and shape the whole story into a right track. Another symbolism I would like to say is Melinda’s closet. As we all know the meaning of closet, it must be a place that nobody can go into but yourself, yet that is a place where Melinda prefer to go there all the time through the whole plot. Take what she said in the novel as an example: “closet is a good thing, a quiet place that helps me hold these thoughts inside my head where no one can hear them. “ To be more specific, that is to say Melinda is an autistic girl and never likes to share her feelings to others which is exactly what the author shape her to be that kind of character. Certainly, there must be lots of different variety of symbolism throughout whole novel, but I would say these two give me a better deepen understanding of our novel “Speak”.
April 20, 2010 at 10:49 pm
There is a lot of symbolism in this novel. Today, we find numerous symbols in order to represent different emotions and the stories behind the characters, and the tree and lips are the most impressive to me. Primarily, the most obvious symbol to represent Melinda’s grief emotion is the tree. The tree symbolizes death in the story since Melinda is dying inside by hiding the details of her rape. Sometimes Melinda describes the tree with a sorrowful illustration. Whenever Melinda tries to create her tree in art class, she struggles. Her tree lacks dimension; as the quote said, she “can’t bring it to life.” I think it could also be another indication is Melinda was trying to tell her rape to others but she did not know how to tell. Additionally, I consider the lip also has a meaning. After Andy raped Melinda, Melinda starts to bite her lip occasionally. It may be point out that Melinda is scared to tell the truth or faces to interact with people.
Moreover, the lip, of course has a great connection with the story I guess. I believe the lip means Melinda does not talk to people. Melinda’s mouth is an important symbol. Her lips are cut by those students. Throughout the novel, Melinda picks her cracked lips and causing them to bleed. When I was reading this plot, my heart was also stressed. I reckon that she is afraid of those students, her teachers and her parents. Melinda’s lips represent her inability to speak up about the rape. Since we experience what high school dilemmas like cliques, popularity contests, and struggles with identity, Speak is really a great novel, and it really makes me can think things deeply after I finished Melinda’s misfortune.
April 21, 2010 at 2:46 am
it is very interesting that what Annie “googled”, I was really surprised and is still surprised to see that Melinda’s last name actually means “mute” in Italian. (I can see the author’s deep insight.) For the symbolism, there are many symbols that are existed in this novel. Some symbols such as Trees are very vivid symbols to us, but some symbols in this novel are not obvious as the trees. I will discuss some of obvious and hidden symbols that are presented in this novel since Rajvir mentioned most symbols in this novel. For the trees, in general, the trees represent life and prosperity ; However in this novel , the author uses the trees to symbolize the death that symbolize Melilnda’s dying inner mind due to her excessive effort to hide her rape.
It is evident that while she tries to draw trees , she struggles and fails that she “can’t bring it[the tree] to life.” Also another symbol in this novel is leaves. The leaves on the tree in this novel symbolize Melinda that even though she feels dead inside , but she wants and remains and tries to make her safe as if the leaves on the tree hold on the tree to remain safe. These two symbols , trees and leaves, symbolize Melinda really well. We all can see the trees represent Melinda and her mind , but it is difficult to find the leaves on the tree symbolize Melinda and her mind too.
April 21, 2010 at 10:40 am
There are a number of symbolisms through the whole novel. First of all, the most obvious one is the tree, it illustrates based on two different statements. Certainly, Melinda turns the art assignment with a tree, which one explains her situation, a dying, and illness tress. Although it has talked about several times already, I believe. In addition, I found out there is a frame shows the symbolism more by comparison with her assignment. (It has already talked about in #2, it also works here.) The condition of the tree is a kind of symbol of hers, which holds considerable illness. However, the tree cannot enough demonstrates the symbol of the novel. From my own opinion, lip is a symbolism to the novel because since Melinda always bites her lip until it bloody. It happened to her when she suffers classmates’ laughing, ex-friends’ indifferent looking, she does not want to against them even Melinda dislikes herself. Furthermore, the paper is the symbolism of the novel, on account of Melinda expresses her emotion on the paper instead of the mouth. Through the hints from Rajvi during the discussion, the mirror and her name are the symbolisms. Melinda Sordino, I never know this name before and even the Microsoft World does not. When I try to google it, it defines in “a mute for a violin”. The name of Melinda really explains to readers her characteristic anyway. Finally, the mirror shows Melinda is great dislike herself, it is shown when she look at her reflected on the mirror. The last but not least, the symbolisms do reflect the characteristic of Melinda, and also it display the point of view to the main character by the author, because it’s a smooth method to shape the novel and the main character.
April 22, 2010 at 3:02 am
As I slowly read through the novel “Speak”, bit by bit, I found plenty of symbols that have a great impact on the protagonist, Melinda. However, Anderson uses many memorable symbols such as trees, lips,and snow. The top two symbols from the novel are trees and lips although some of my group members have already written about it. It is true that trees and lips are the most significant symbols in this novel. As my opinion, trees are symbolic of life and strength;lips symbolize communication and the unspeakable pain within Melinda. Melinda is like the oak tree in her front yard “that tree is sick”, she is like the powerless and dying oak tree which nobody cares about. Every time when she tried to move on or grow up, she think about the night of the party, the unspeakable pain, and then she back down again. Moreover, it took her a lot of time to finally realized that the rape wasn’t her fault. Now, she is willing to talk about the unspeakable pain and she gathers all her strength back.