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Will The CCP Maintain Power?
“I plunge my hand into the bottom of the globe and fish out my paper. ‘Tree.’ Tree? It’s too easy. I learned how to draw a tree in second grade. I reach for another piece of paper. Mr. Freeman shakes his head. ‘You have just chose your destiny; you can’t change that,”(Page 12) Melinda Sordio, the main character in Laurie Hasle Anderson’s novel Speak, must draw a tree to find her lost soul. Melinda thinks that a tree will be easy to draw but as she goes through a whole year have as a freshmen she learns lessons and life but more importantly she learns things about her self. As Melinda attempts to draw a tree she realizes that there is no “right way” to draw a tree but rather her tree drawing must come from her heart.
Throughout the book, Melinda is tormented by her memories and by most of the school students for an incident that occurred over summer vacation at Andy’s Evans party. Melinda got drunk and was raped by a boy named Andy. When she calls the cops she ruins the party is ruined, everyone at school hates Melinda. No one knows that Melinda was raped. This tree project assigned to her is a whole year project. The various trees Melinda draws symbolize the stages in her recovery from the rape. They trace her emotional journey from hopelessness to healing.
“I’ve been painting water colors of trees that have been hit by lightning. I try to paint so they are nearly dead but not totally.”(Page 30-31) The first tree Melinda tries to draw is a tree that was hit by lightning. This symbolizes Melinda’s feelings at the time. The lightning symbolizes Andy and Melinda is the tree. When struck by the lightning the tree is almost obliterated but it still has some life left in it. The same with Melinda, her mind and spirit are almost obliterated but there is still some hope for life. The lightning further more symbolizes Andy because lightning is violent, sudden and destructive. Same for the rape, it is violent sudden and it is also destructive. Though she doesn’t share her emotions and feelings with anyone, drawing her project is like a therapy for her. She expresses her emotions through her drawings.
“I take out a page of notebook paper and a pen and doodle a tree, my second-grade version. Hopeless. I crumple it into a ball and take out another sheet. How hard can it be to put a tree on a piece of paper?” (Page 32) Melinda’s second attempt at a tree ends up a failure. After trying to draw a simple second-grade tree, she realizes that this is going to be harder that it looks. This tree that Melinda draws is a “giving up tree”. This symbolizes a lot in Melinda’s journey to inner peace. After the first tree Melinda drew there was hope, but in this drawing, it is like [next page]