Trees, Seeds, Plants, and Forests Symbol in Speak

Near the beginning of the novel, Melinda is assigned a tree as her yearlong assignment in art class. As the narrative progresses, Melinda’s attempts to draw a tree come to symbolize her ability to move past her rape, and to mature as a person. Trees, and plants in general, are powerful symbols because of the life, strength, and fertility that they represent. Although she originally draws trees that have died after being struck by lightning, just as she believes that her life stopped after her rape, Melinda eventually moves on to creating trees that are living and thriving. As Melinda’s life and mind become less desolate and hopeless, she moves closer and closer to being able to create her work of art. She fails at this task over and over, but never gives up, a fact that represents her resilience in the face of her trauma. Throughout the novel Melinda also experiences many memories of childhood associated with plants and trees; as she begins to heal, she also starts gardening, an action that represents how she is coming back to life from her previously frozen state. She even describes her former, untraumatized self as a “seed” that will one day emerge again. As the novel comes to a close, Melinda is finally able to draw what she calls a “homely sketch” of a tree; she knows the sketch is imperfect, yet feels satisfied with it anyway. Similarly, she knows that she has been damaged by her rape and its subsequent trauma, yet feels that she will be able to grow and heal once again.

Trees, Seeds, Plants, and Forests Quotes in Speak

The Speak quotes below all refer to the symbol of Trees, Seeds, Plants, and Forests. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:

I look for shapes in my face. Could I put a face in my tree, like a dryad from Greek mythology? Two muddy-circle eyes under black-dash eyebrows, piggy-nose nostrils, and a chewed-up horror of a mouth. Definitely not a dryad face. I can’t stop biting my lips. It looks like my mouth belongs to someone else, someone I don’t even know.
I get out of bed and take down the mirror. I put it in the back of my closet, facing the wall.

Related Characters: Melinda Sordino (speaker)

Related Symbols: Trees, Seeds, Plants, and Forests, Mirrors, Lips, Blood

Page Number and Citation: 17

Explanation and Analysis:

Applesmell soaks the air. One time when I was little, my parents took me to an orchard. Daddy set me high in an apple tree. It was like falling up into a storybook, yummy and red and leaf and the branch not shaking a bit. Bees bumbled through the air, so stuffed with apple they couldn’t be bothered to sting me. The sun warmed my hair, and a wind pushed my mother into my father’s arms, and all the apple-picking parents and children smiled for a long, long minute.

Related Characters: Melinda Sordino (speaker), Melinda’s mother, Melinda’s father

Related Symbols: Trees, Seeds, Plants, and Forests, Warmth and Sunlight

Page Number and Citation: 66

Explanation and Analysis:

I open up a paper clip and scratch it across the inside of my left wrist. Pitiful. If a suicide attempt is a cry for help, then what is this? A whimper, a peep? I draw little windowcracks of blood, etching line after line until it stops hurting. It looks like I arm-wrestled a rosebush.
Mom sees the wrist at breakfast.
Mom: “I don’t have time for this, Melinda.”

Related Characters: Melinda Sordino (speaker), Melinda’s mother (speaker)

Related Symbols: Trees, Seeds, Plants, and Forests, Blood

Page Number and Citation: 88

Explanation and Analysis:

I stumble from thornbush to thornbush— my mother and father who hate each other, Rachel who hates me, a school that gags on me like I’m a hairball. And Heather.
I just need to hang on long enough for my new skin to graft. Mr. Freeman thinks I need to find my feelings. How can I not find them? They are chewing me alive like an infestation of thoughts, shame, mistakes.

Related Characters: Melinda Sordino (speaker), Melinda’s mother, Melinda’s father, Heather, Mr. Freeman, Rachel Bruin

Related Symbols: Trees, Seeds, Plants, and Forests

Page Number and Citation: 125

Explanation and Analysis:

Slush is frozen over. People say that winter lasts forever, but it’s because they obsess over the thermometer. North in the mountains, the maple syrup is trickling. Brave geese punch through the thin ice left on the lake. Underground, pale seeds roll over in their sleep. Starting to get restless. Starting to dream green.

Related Characters: Melinda Sordino (speaker)

Related Symbols: Trees, Seeds, Plants, and Forests, Birds, Water, Ice, and Melting, Warmth and Sunlight

Page Number and Citation: 133

Explanation and Analysis:

This looks like a tree, but it is an average, ordinary, everyday, boring tree. Breathe life into it. Make it bend— trees are flexible, so they don’t snap. Scar it, give it a twisted branch— perfect trees don’t exist. Nothing is perfect. Flaws are interesting. Be the tree.

Related Characters: Mr. Freeman (speaker), Melinda Sordino

Related Symbols: Trees, Seeds, Plants, and Forests

Page Number and Citation: 153

Explanation and Analysis:

I crouch by the trunk, my fingers stroking the bark, seeking a Braille code, a clue, a message on how to come back to life after my long undersnow dormancy. I have survived. I am here. Confused, screwed up, but here. So, how can I find my way? Is there a chain saw of the soul, an ax I can take to my memories or fears? I dig my fingers into the dirt and squeeze. A small, clean part of me waits to warm and burst through the surface. Some quiet Melindagirl I haven’t seen in months. That is the seed I will care for.

Related Characters: Melinda Sordino (speaker)

Related Symbols: Trees, Seeds, Plants, and Forests, Water, Ice, and Melting, Warmth and Sunlight

Page Number and Citation: 188

Explanation and Analysis:

IT happened. There is no avoiding it, no forgetting. No running away, or flying, or burying, or hiding. Andy Evans raped me in August when I was drunk and too young to know what was happening. It wasn’t my fault. He hurt me. It wasn’t my fault. And I’m not going to let it kill me. I can grow.
I look at my homely sketch. It doesn’t need anything. Even through the river in my eyes I can see that. It isn’t perfect and that makes it just right.

Related Characters: Melinda Sordino (speaker), Andy Evans

Related Symbols: Trees, Seeds, Plants, and Forests, Birds, Water, Ice, and Melting, Warmth and Sunlight

Page Number and Citation: 198

Explanation and Analysis:

Trees, Seeds, Plants, and Forests Symbol Timeline in Speak

The timeline below shows where the symbol Trees, Seeds, Plants, and Forests appears in Speak. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.

...an emotion, and for the first time that day, Melinda is excited. She gets a tree, and though she believes that the assignment will be too easy, Mr. Freeman tells her... (full context)

Since the pep rally, Melinda has used watercolors to paint trees that have been struck by lightning. Mr. Freeman has not commented on them, however, and... (full context)

...son from getting a job as a firefighter. As he fumes, Melinda doodles an apple tree, and thinks about the linoleum block that she is trying to carve in art class.... (full context)

...class. Mr. Freeman, thrilled by her idea, allows Melinda to take time off from the tree to work on the bird. (full context)

...to flash back to a happy moment in her childhood, when she visited an apple tree orchard with her parents. She remembers her father holding her mother, and the warmth of... (full context)

Isolation, Loneliness, and Depression Theme Icon

...two days till Christmas, Melinda’s mother tells her (via note) to put up the Christmas tree. Melinda drags her family’s fake tree out of the basement, cleans it up, and begins... (full context)

...Christmas.” She bundles up and heads out into the snow, where she is surrounded by trees, bushes, and ice. As she plays in the snow, making a snow angel, Melinda remembers... (full context)

...complains as it melts on her back. She takes holly and pine off of nearby trees and bring them in to make a centerpiece. She wishes that her family could borrow... (full context)

...even come by to write about his irreverent mural. Melinda, meanwhile, cannot figure out her tree. Having ruined multiple linoleum blocks, she describes the tree outside her house, “a strong old... (full context)

...the freezing cold art room, Melinda starts a new linoleum block, commenting that her last tree looked as if it had died of a fungal infection. (full context)

...a painted list on his wall. Next to Melinda’s name is a question mark. Her tree, she reports, is “frozen.” She claims that a kindergartner could do better, and that she... (full context)

Melinda looks at a book of landscapes brimming with trees and plants. She recalls that Mr. Freeman hasn’t said anything good to her since her... (full context)

...picture of Ms. Keen as a bird (a robin) together. Melinda tries to make a tree for the bird, and is pleased with the results. When David’s hand brushes hers at... (full context)

...gone to high school with her. She does not, however, find a picture of a tree. (full context)

Inspired, Melinda draws “a Cubist tree” which looks like “glass shards” and “lips with triangle brown leaves.” Mr. Freeman is pleased... (full context)

...praises her Cubist sketch and the “growth” in her work. Melinda, however, believes that her “trees suck.” He responds that she is too hard on herself, and Melinda actually replies back,... (full context)

Melinda studies for a biology test about seeds, and finds herself interest in the topic, noting the different ways that seeds grow (they... (full context)

...on the bus with her peers. She greets her poster of Maya Angelou, her Cubist tree, and her turkey-bone bird sculpture, and curls up for a nap. Sleeping at home has... (full context)

...climbs out of her window onto the porch roof, comparing the stars to “fat white seed.” She notes that the slush has turned to ice, but believes that spring is coming... (full context)

...Feeling insecure, Melinda drank three beers and wandered away from the crowd into the pine trees. (full context)

...sees Rachel’s angry face, feels a slap on her face, and remembers crawling through a forest of legs. (full context)

Rather than pay attention, Melinda sketches “a willow tree drooping into water” to tape on the inside of her closet; she considers moving in... (full context)

Melinda looks at the walls of the closet, which are filled with pictures of trees. She categorizes them into different periods, and notes that she is getting better at drawing... (full context)

Melinda opens by calling Mr. Freeman “a jerk” because he is criticizing her tree. Although she’s annoyed, she does agree with him. Despairing, she decides that real artists like... (full context)

Melinda remembers that she played a tree in a second-grade play because she was bad at being a sheep. She recalls how... (full context)

...raking aside layers and layers of moldy, decomposing leaves from the bushes in her front yard. She notices that her house is the only one on the street without a perfect... (full context)

...work. He tries to encourage her, but she doesn’t answer. They both look at the plants in the yard, and as a cloud covers the sun, Melinda shivers. He points out... (full context)

...the leaves out of my throat,” and asks him if he will buy some flower seeds. (full context)

...what she’s thinking—that Heather betrayed her and deserves to fail—but adds that she needs to plant over the weekend, and doesn’t need help redecorating. Melinda asks Heather to leave, and Heather... (full context)

Feeling empowered by standing up to Heather, planting marigolds, and asking her mother if she can redecorate her bedroom, Melinda attributes her newfound... (full context)

Melinda writes a note explaining that she was raped at the party “under the trees”, adding that she “was stupid and drunk,” and then “was just too scared” to speak... (full context)

...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... (full context)

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... (full context)

...in his grades, Melinda reports. She takes advantage of the delay to work on her tree one more time; as she does so, Mr. Freeman uses white paint to cover his... (full context)

“My tree is definitely breathing,” Melinda reports. She tries to create an imperfect tree with initials in... (full context)

Melinda decides that her tree is missing something, and uses chalk and water to draw birds above it (although the... (full context)

Speak

Laurie Halse Anderson

Trees, Seeds, Plants, and Forests Symbol Analysis

Trees, Seeds, Plants, and Forests Quotes in Speak

Trees, Seeds, Plants, and Forests Symbol Timeline in Speak