She has a story. It’s been locked inside for months. No one knew about the story, just her. One summer, one party has changed everything. The protagonist of the story Speak, a girl named Melinda, has been secretly hiding something too horrific and scary to tell anyone or to tell herself. No one knew Melinda was raped at a party no one knew how Melinda felt during that time. Throughout the book, Melinda was insecure in her own shoes, she tries to put her emotion into art as a way of speaking, and she stands alone because she is an outcast. Melinda identifies as the tree from the beginning of the story right away because she’s soundless and she has too many open wounds within herself. During the book Melinda tries to grow from the big summer tragedy. The tree symbolizes her silence, scars, and her growth.
In the beginning, Melinda is utterly quiet when it comes to speaking to people, and she can’t express the things she wants because she doesn’t use her voice, like a tree. She locked everyone and everything outside of her little own solemn world and never spoke to anyone only if she had to. Melinda watches everything around her but doesn’t do anything, she stands there alone:
The air swirls with sawdust. Sap oozes from the open sores on the trunk. He is killing the tree. He’ll only leave the stump. The tree is dying. There’s nothing to do or say. We watch in silence as the tree crashes piece by piece to the damp ground. (Anderson, pg 187)
Melinda refers to herself as this