Response to Speak

I learned a lot from my table mates. They taught me that there were a lot of things in the book that I did not catch and that there were a lot of things that may have been hidden in the book that I did not even realize were there, However, this part of the book was so short that I do not think there was enough things to discuss with my table mates. Our reading only had 40 pages to read, so there were not that many interesting things to discuss about.

One of the interesting things that we discussed about was how isolated she seemed in her life. (Melinda) We thought that she seemed isolated because she had no friends at all, except for the new girl that she had a one-sided friendship with. Also, in her family life, she was very isolated at home. She did not have much contact with her parents, and when her parents came home, all she would do would be to go upstairs into her room while her parents left her alone and watched t.v in their living room. She did not even see them that much because they were working when she came home, she lived alone from after school until they came home from work.

We felt that this was kind of sad and that this may be one of the reasons that Melinda does not talk a lot in the story, because she does not have that much experience relating to other people, whether they are her own age or if they are adults. Another example of this may be her school teacher, Mr. Neck. when she angers him and he asks what she is doing, all she does is stand there and not say anything. She may not answer to him because she does not know how to talk to teachers. She might not also be able to relate to angry people, because she does not relate to people most of the time.

Another thing that we discussed was the mirror in her room and why she took it down and made it face the wall. We said that this might have happened because she was afraid to see what she had become, and she did not want to see how she changed from last year to this year.