Don’t Judge a Book by its Cover

Author’s Note: This is a essay about the main character, Melinda in the book, Speak.

The purpose of this piece is to explain how Melinda shows the characteristics of a dynamic character. I also relate Melinda to another character from another novel.

Have you ever felt so alone in the world, you didn’t care to live? That whatever you did was always wrong? This situation relates to Melinda in the book, Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson. In this book, the main character, Melinda, gets attacked at a high school party. She calls the cops because she was scared in this situation, but that was a big mistake. Everyone hates her now because of that one little thing she did. But now she is overly depressed, though, throughout the book she develops herself just like what a dynamic character would do. Dynamic characters get stronger throughout the book and build themselves. In the book, Melinda obviously demonstrates the characteristics of a dynamic character because of many reasons.

To begin with, one of the reasons Melinda is a dynamic character is that throughout the book, she grows and gets stronger. At the beginning of the book Melinda was depressed. She was moping around and was simply not a fun person to be around. However, in the middle of Speak, Melinda tries to tell her old friend, Rachelle, what really happened at the crazy high school party. But Rachelle wouldn’t listen, thus Melinda became depressed again. A quote that shows this is, “Liar! I can’t believe you! You’re jealous. You’re a twisted little freak and you’re jealous I’m popular and I’m going to the prom so you lie to me like this. And you sent me that note didn’t you? You are so sick.” This quote is an example how Melinda worked up the courage to talk to Rachelle and tried to explain everything but ended in a disaster. She grew a little but then Rachelle shut her down. At the end of Speak, although, she grew back to her old confident self. She told Rachelle what she needed to tell her, and Rachelle cooperated. They then became friends again, which shows that Melinda did a great job of conquering her fears.

Even though Melinda growing through the book is an important reason why she is a dynamic character, Melinda solving her problems is another key reason. Melinda’s main problem in Speak was that people were judging her on something that didn’t really happen. Yes, Melinda did call the cops at that party but no one knew why. Melinda keeping that secret in was a big part in the problem also.  A quote that shows that she was keeping her feelings inside but didn’t care is, “It's easier not to say anything. Shut your trap; button your lip, can it. All that crap you hear on TV about communication and expressing feelings is a lie. Nobody really wants to hear what you have to say.” This shows she doesn’t really care to speak about what happened on that night; that’s a problem. Eventually though, Melinda comes clean and concurs her problems. She fixed this problem by telling everyone what really did happen. She then became very popular and everything was resolved! It was a great ending to the book.

Melinda also relates to Emily in Lipstick Apology by Jenifer Jabaley. They both have similar situations- a big event happened that made them depressed. Though, rather than someone attacking a girl at a high school party, Lipstick Apology was about a girls parents’ death. In both books, both characters were depressed at the start of both situations. They both moped around all day without a care in the world. They didn’t want to go to school, talk to friends, or even eat! They just wanted to be sad. However, both characters got through their problems and got through it. In Lipstick Apology for example, she got more into talking with friends and got her mind off her parents. Melinda started to tell everyone one what happened and opened up. Both characters grew throughout the book.

As you can see, a lot of reasons clearly explain how Melinda from the book Speak shows the characteristics of a dynamic character. She was almost a whole new character at the end of the story! She realized she had to do something about her problems and resolved it. She is probably very thankful to come to her senses because she hadn’t she would still be depressed.