Speak Character Analysis

People often express their emotions by drawing a object such as tree. Sketching a tree was a passage to express Melinda’s emotions to everyone including her friends, teachers and family. Melinda was a freshman student who joined the arts class. On the first day of school Melinda and her classmates had to pick from a bowl a object that they need to draw. Melinda picked tree and she need to draw a tree the whole year expressing her emotions and her experiences in life. Over the year, Melinda have improve her skills while showing her emotions without her knowing. Laurie Halse Anderson, author of Speak, demonstrate that Melinda’s emotions affected the tree that Melinda’s drew by the illustrating the roots, birds and branches, while thinking about …show more content…
In the begginning of the book, Melinda does not like the idea of her drawing the tree by saying “Tree? It’s too easy, I learned how to draw a tree in second grade” (22). This quote show that Melinda thought that illustrating a tree with emotions was simple task and during these days, her emotions had been easy because Heather was there for her and some of her old friends was with her in art class. She likes the idea that she is not alone during that days. But as Melinda go through art class, she realized that her tree needs sometimes by quoting “You can barely see the tree at” (31). She used this quote because during that days, she had been feeling rough. Melinda had been feeling that she lost her voice and everything else. Her tree was dark because she is feeling alone, depression and anger. However as the Melinda reach her voice and let go of her feelings, her tree was wonderful by describing “My tree is definitely breathing” (196). This show that she let go her anger and reach her freedom to speak up. She is ready to face the world with full confidence. Overall, the evolution of the tree symbolize the emotions of Melinda by showing her thoughts and emotions at the beginning of the school. It also show how her emotions develop and became strong because of the bad experiences happened to her that she

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