Guided Response - Speak

I started reading the novel “Speak” by Laurie Halse Anderson. So far I am half way through the second marking period, as they call it. Melinda is the main character in my book. She has lost all of her friends from something that she did at a party this last summer. Everyone hates her, until a new girl named Heather, who is from Ohio, befriends her at school. In school you have to belong to a group, and now Melinda doesn’t belong to any of those groups, she is a loner. Heather wants to belong to a group so bad she tries to get Melinda to join one with her. Everyone at school is very mean to Melinda because of what she did. They call her names, they cuss at her, and they even kick her down the bleachers. I can’t imagine what she did to get everyone to hate her so on I go to finish reading to try to find out why.

Free Choice- 13 reasons why

In the novel that I read called, “Thirteen reasons why”, I found it a little disturbing. The question I asked myself the most was, why she didn’t cry out more for help and was her life really that bad that she needed to commit suicide? I guess I can understand why she didn’t cry out more because usually people who try to commit suicide won’t just come out and say that they need or want help. I guess I look at it from a mother’s point of view instead of as hers, a teenager. The reasons that she listed was quite valid, but I didn’t see any of them to be so bad that someone would want to commit suicide. Yes some of them were pretty horrific but her life was not as bad as some people have it in this world. I kept wishing that someone would have reached out to help her.

Thirteen Reasons Why- Questions to the Author

I have finished my novel called “Thirteen Reasons Why”. I would definitely recommend this book to other readers. I stayed interested in the book the entire time because it always kept me wanting to know more, wanting to know what was on the next cassette tape that Hannah Baker made before she committed suicide. She was very creative in thinking of putting her thirteen reasons why she committed suicide on cassette tapes. The detail that she speaks about is very great in depth. The only thing I would have changed about the story or I guess what I didn’t really understand is that when she was at the party with Clay Jensen and they were in the bedroom together kissing, why didn’t she let him know that she liked him? Obviously he liked her or he wouldn’t be in there with her, so why didn’t she just let him know that she was in pain and needed his help. He had never betrayed her so why didn’t she feel that she could trust him? Although I guess I can understand that when people feel they are at their lowest and about ready to commit suicide they don’t run to people and tell them they need help, they see that their only way out of their pain is to kill themselves. But her reasoning was because of the effect that everyone else had on her and how they took everything from her, except for Clay. I feel she should have at least tried to talk to him.