Free Sample Essays > Literature
Will The CCP Maintain Power?
like she has given up completely and there is little hope evident. The situation at school is getting worse and everyone is ridiculing Melinda. To make this even worse her parents do nothing but yell at her. Instead of sitting down and asking what is the matter, they keep on yelling at her. They are completely oblivious to what is happening to Melinda. All these things are making Melinda feel this way, all these things are overwhelming Melinda. It looks like she is about to give up completely.
This tree that she draws also represents the fact that Melinda is not being her self and that she is trying to change her self in order to cover up and forget about the rape. She draws the very simple tree that is without emotion and feeling. This shows something very important. This shows that she wants to forget about the rape and pretend like it never happened. This is evident in her drawing because from trees being hit by lightning to simple effortless trees shows that instead of solving the crisis that is bothering her; she would rather pretend it never happened. The problem with this is that if she just forgets about it then she’ll never solve the problem and it will torment her the rest of her life.
“I have already ruined six linoleum blocks. I can see it in my head: a strong old oak tree with a wide scarred trunk and thousands of leaves reaching to the sun.” (Page 78) Next, Melinda experiments with linoleum to do her tree project. Melinda ends up using six linoleum blocks in order to complete her project. This effort to make her project look right symbolizes her effort to recover from the rape incident. She keeps on trying and trying, and when she fails she tries again. Her effort to forget is directly symbolic of her effort to make a complete tree. The only thing that is missing that it doesn’t make it a complete tree is that it doesn’t “breath”. In Melissa’s case, the only thing that is missing from her is her ability to speak. This is what is missing from her to make her complete.
In addition, the linoleum is directly symbolic of the process that she has to go through to recover from the incident that plagues her mind and soul. To make art out of linoleum, it takes a lot of time and it is an extremely hard task, the same with her recovery. Melinda’s recovery process will be very difficult (considering that she doesn’t have any friends or even family that will help her) and it will take a long time until she has gotten over the incident. Furthermore when you work with linoleum it is very unforgiving for once you mess up that is it, you can’t fix it. You must start all over again. The same with Melinda, once she messes up in her recovery she can’t [next page]