Tuesday, February 21, 2017

Laurie Halse Anderson: Speak

***SPOILERS***




            My book list goal was to study works in which the reader’s experience hinges upon what we know and when we know it. This plays a crucial role in the books I’ve chosen, but I’m starting to wonder whether it plays a crucial role in all of fiction. Information management was the theme of one of our craft talks this summer. Surely “what we know and when we know it” covers a vast percentage of what constitutes writing?
            Speak had to be my first reading because it’s all about an unknown. As readers, we have no idea what has happened in Melinda’s life to make starting ninth grade so unspeakably horrible. This is not an overstatement. She has lost all of her friends and her family communicates with her only by post-its. Everyone seems terrifying and cruel. But everything was fine before this summer, so we know that there was an event—just not what it was. There was a before and an after, clearly defined.
             Melinda can’t admit or express to herself what happened, either, which makes this a particularly interesting example to study. The secret is a secret from herself. Burying it has turned her silent, literally unable to speak when she tries. She has bitten her lips into scabs. Functioning in a new and unfamiliar high school seems to be beyond her.
            The first person narrative voice carries all of this while still maintaining a dry and ironic humor about things. Speak follows Melinda’s school year, quarter by quarter, including her grades, but most of all follows her gradual understanding of what happened, admitting it to herself in tiny steps, then getting free of it as she’s able to tell others bits of the story. It’s the most effective silencing I’ve seen, one that only really becomes apparent after we see it unravel into speech.
            One of the more evident ways that Anderson conveys this is through Melinda’s names for the senior boy who committed the crime. Melinda calls him “IT” in all capitals at first, does not even see or describe him as a person in any sense but a terrorizing force. Only gradually does IT get part of a name, as “Beast” and then “Andy Beast” and then his full name. Melinda only breaks her silence to protect her former best friend, when IT begins dating her, and even then only in silence, first articulating what happened to her by writing her friend a note in the library after being hushed by the librarian.
            Managing this information puts us in the mind of the narrator, not just because we’re privy to her thoughts, but because we’re blocked from the memories she won’t allow herself to remember. The graphic moment when Melinda first faints in biology class lets us know what we’re in for. Her lab partner splays a dead frog on its back, pins its four limbs, and then slices down the center of its abdomen with a scalpel. Confronted with this image, unable to escape it, Melinda collapses. And after this brush with the truth, she begins to run away from everything in an effort to avoid further confrontation, hiding out in closets, the mall, the hospital, anywhere she can get away from memories and interaction with IT.
            Would this novel be as effective if we knew everything going in? Definitely not. That position of power and knowledge has to belong to Melinda. In fact, nobody knows what really happened except for her and the boy, and when he’s finally confronted with his actions, he denies that he did anything wrong. Her best friend denies the truth of it when first told. The truth withheld forces us to judge Melinda as much as her friends and family do from the beginning, as someone acting out and going silent without giving anyone the reasons why. We judge her because she’s starting ninth grade and being dramatic about who sits where on the bus. It’s easy to judge when we don’t know the truth and she isn’t telling us anything. 
            Keeping secrets from the reader: I’m a fan. It has to be done carefully, though. This is a masterful example. Dramatic irony is as old as fiction, but putting it right into the narrator’s mind seems like an extra level that takes finesse. The narrator’s repression of the truth and gradual realization and acknowledgement of that truth has to be absolutely central to and part of the
 unfolding story, as it is here.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Please leave a comment! I'd love to hear from you.