Speak is a story of a ninth-grader named Melinda Sordino, a rape victim. Throughout the novel, Melinda is in her own world of despair and physically cannot speak to others about her rape. As the novel progresses, she slowly starts to deal with the rape and finally accepts it and decides to move on with her life. In Speak, Anderson's use of rhetorical devices like allusions, symbolism, and metaphors and similes helps to create the texts depressed tone that later change to hopeful.
Using allusions like Picasso's cubism and The Scarlet Letter help to show Melinda's internal pain. Picasso's art style of cubism helps show how Melinda feels about her life. Cubism is a style where the picture seems to be cut and rearranged in a way that does not make sense. This reflects how her life has changed. Melinda says she understands that cubism is about "seeing beyond what is on the surface" (119). This shows how she sees herself and how the other characters are unable to understand the reasons for Melinda's actions during the party. In English class, Melinda reads The Scarlet Letter. She states that the main character and her "would get along her wearing that A, me with an S. for silent, for stupid, for scared. S for silly. For shame" (101). This expresses her feelings about herself and how she is dealing with the idea of rape. In The Scarlet Letter, the main character, Hester, is scorned by her community and forced to wear a big letter A on her clothes because she committed adultery. Just like Hester, Melinda is also scorned by her community because of an incident at a party. During the summer before her freshmen year, Melinda is raped by a senior named Andy Evans. She calls the police who break up the party and arrest some kids for underage drinking. The reason why Melinda calls the police in the first place was to tell the police about the rape. When it is time to tell the police, she ends up not telling the police because she was too shocked to process the whole event.