Listen if you can.

Rape is an issue everyone can get on one side of. It is wrong, we all know that. However, rape is classified in different ways.  Some believe rape is only rape when enjoyment is not taken from it, many have other classifications for what rape is, but here’s the one that we all should go by: Rape is when one person forces themselves sexually onto another without consent.  I fact, Webster agrees with this with it’s online definition of rape which states that rape is, “unlawful sexual activity and usually sexual intercourse carried out forcibly or under threat of injury against the will usually of a female or with a person who is beneath a certain age or incapable of valid consent”
Why is this all so important?  Because rape is more common that most people like to think, and more damaging than we can imagine.  In Laurie Halse Anderson’s novel, Speak, the reader is witness to the pain and damage that rape can bring.  Melinda, a victim who had been raped by a fellow classmate, is devastated by this violation to the point of being almost mute.  As if this was not enough, Melinda was ostracized for having called the cops for help, who promptly came and broke up the party that was going on.  Melinda is alone with her secret and is forced to share it only with her enemy, the man who raped her, named Andy.
The novel is very honestly written, and we begin to see that this has effected Melinda’s every though and how she reacts to and interacts with the rest of the world.  Melinda has picked up unhealthy habits and quirks. She bites her lip until it bleeds, the first instance of which happens on page five of Speak when her best friend, who does not know about the rape, mouths to Melinda that she hates her.
Melinda is a person of worth and the reader begins to know her for her true self, a girl who tells it like it is and possesses great wit and a unique perspective of the world. She sees herself, on page five, as a “wounded zebra” to a teacher’s predator, then proceeds to introduce the reader to the ten lies they tell you in high school, though others come into being as the book progresses.
The reader also understands how deeply Melinda’s pain goes. She cannot even bring herself to say her enemy’s name and prefers to call him “the beast” or “It” instead. She cannot longer see him as human.  In one encounter with him in the third marking period on page 97 of the book, she sees him as a predator, a wolf, and herself as a bunny rabbit. She is so completely terrified of him that as he spots her and begins to smile, moving toward her, she runs from him and decides she cannot endure a day of school and people with their judging eyes that day.
However, this book is power for those who have endured similar situations and understanding for those who have not. It is a tool for overcoming a deeply wounding experience and provides and inside look at a girl who has been torn by this experience, leaving the reader connected to her and perhaps even preventing acts like this from occurring in the future.