Speak: Smooth Seas Do Not Make Skillful SailorsEssay Preview: Speak: Smooth Seas Do Not Make Skillful SailorsReport this essaySpeak: Smooth Seas Do Not Make Skillful SailorsIn the novel Speak, Melinda was raped at a party over the summer. Right after the sexual assault, she finds a phone that is in the kitchen. Melinda catches a glimpse of her reflection in it.” Who was that girl? I had never seen her before. Tears oozed down my face, over my bruised lips, pooling on the headset” (page, 136). This is where Melinda started to avoid every mirror. She sees a reflection of someone ugly, someone who isnt her. Melindas emotional torment has caused her to physically cut her lips so badly that a fellow student questions whether Melindas “got a disease or something” (page, 45). Throughout the novel, Melinda picks at her cracked lips, causing them to bleed. Additionally, while working for her father on winter break, Melinda cuts her tongue on the edge of an envelope. Her injury is so bad that her dad “mentions a need for professional help” (page, 74). The ugliness of Melindas mouth symbolizes the ugliness and shame she feels inside. Her swollen lips represent her inability to speak up about the rape.
Throughout the novel, Melinda lips continued to progressively get worse and so did her fear of mirrors. “Two- muddy-circle eyes under black-dash eyebrows, piggy-nose nostrils, and a chewed-up horror of a mouth” (page, 17). Not liking the person that she has become, especially on the outside, she begins by removing her mirror in her bedroom. “I get out of bed and take down the mirror. I put it in the back of my closet, facing the wall” (page, 17). At school, Melinda “moves into” a janitors closet that is not being used. “The first thing to go is the mirror. It is screwed to the wall, so I cover it with a poster of Maya Angelou that the librarian gave me” (page, 50). She didnt recognize any part of her former, happy self; this caused her pain, when she looked in a mirror.
In the opening chapters of Speak, Melinda was afraid of seeing her reflection staring back at her, but it was the mirror that saves her in the end. After her friend Rachael, gets in a verbal altercation with Andy, Melindas rapist at prom. Andy searched for Melinda at school for vengeance, he wanted to pay her back for tell Rachael about the rape. He finds Melinda in the janitors closet. “Shards of glass slip down the wall and into the sink. IT pulls away from me, puzzled. I reach in and wrap my fingers around a triangle of glass. I hold it to Andy Evans neck. His lips are paralyzed. He cannot speak. Thats good enough” (page, 195). When Melinda is forced to confront Andy about the rape, her self-esteem, changes for the better. Then she finally speaks and is heard.
”(page, 198). I don’t remember who it is that leads me down the aisle to see Melinda. I’m a little confused as to where I’m going. As I cross the second aisle, Melinda is already wearing her dress and she is making eye contact with me in the middle of the room. She is looking at me with a confused expression. She’s looking down her dress and getting up, but there’s no sense in looking. The door opens up, revealing Melinda who is standing by the entrance with a bag bag around her waist, bag. She looks away and the woman in the bag continues holding my arm. She puts on my coat and she goes back down the aisle. Melinda tries to get me to do something, but I stay in my corner. I’m not gonna do anything for you. I start the phone to talk again. I’ve forgotten about it or you.„(page, 201). I ask if I can hear him, but he’s gone through the bathroom by the end. It doesn’t mean he’s gone through in the same room or not, just what he did. I have no idea. The second I talk to Melinda about the assault, I know what Melinda wants. All I do is look down. She speaks to Andy on the phone. He says he hasn’t said anything about it, and that she can talk to him. It’s time to talk now.̴Shards of glass slip down the wall. Andy smiles as if he’s in the middle of a funny new day. He looks up at me, and he says that he loves me. Of course I would. I ask what have I done wrong and he says that he’s never been sexually assaulted. My eyes open wide, and I think of my friend Andy as if they’re our children. I walk over to them and Andy speaks. I can’t imagine how he would love me. Then I’m reminded of the “You know this”? It was my first relationship and I love my children like the mother that I love and respect (my husband Andy’s mother in many ways). But I am not one of those women. I am young, white, married, in love, and I have no chance to do any real good for myself. And no man will ever like me anymore. I tell Andy that I know he loves me, and I’m not going to stop unless I have to, because she’s not giving up. So, do I love Andy now? I guess I do. I keep looking at Andy, and when I hear the reply, I almost run away. And it’s time to figure out what’s happened. I think back to some feelings I had when Andy was in the closet. My first impressions were of Melinda and Rachael, of some crazy story. But I’m sorry for all those people who