She shows how difficult it is for Mel to move past her trauma, and depicts how painful but inescapable the act of remembering is for her.
In setting the entire novel with Mel’s mind, Laurie Halse Anderson is portraying the effects of trauma upon the impressionable consciousness of a fourteen-year-old girl. As she experiences everything through the lens of her rape, Mel finds it difficult to enjoy anything, or to view any person or event without distrust and cynicism. The novel is about the various events that happen to Melinda over the course of the school year, but it also focuses on how she interprets those events. When she remembers her childhood, she feels pity and nostalgia for how innocent and carefree she used to be. When she remembers her friends, she realizes that they have since abandoned her. As for her happier memories, the rape and the events that followed it have stained them. Melinda begins Speak burdened by memory and trauma: she has been raped and relives the experience every day, yet is unable to speak to anyone about it.
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