Speak: Part 4, Chapter 22 Summary & Analysis

On a warm and sunny Saturday morning, Melinda watches as arborists come to cure the sick tree outside her house by trimming off its dead branches. The scene becomes horrific, however, as Melinda imagines that the tree’s sap is like blood, and that the chainsaw being used to cut the branches is killing it.

Disgusted by her father, who is pretending to know more about the tree-pruning process than he does, Melinda takes her bike out and rides away, although she doesn’t remember the last time she was on a bike.

Melinda bikes to the barn where the party took place, and walks to the tree-filled spot where she was raped. Her heart pounds as she stands on the spot, crouching by a tree’s trunk and feeling its bark. She feels as if she has been “undersnow” for a long time, and wonders how she can ever be revived. Reminding herself that she has “survived,” she wonders whether she can cut out the sick part of her soul with a chainsaw. Putting her fingers into the dirt, she imagines a “small, clean part of me” that is waiting “to warm and burst through the surface.” She imagines that her old self is like a seed that she must cultivate.