Dolly's Journal Entry 1

In the first part of the novel "Speak" by the author Laurie Halse Anderson, the social issues are represented by the principal character Melinda because in this book she is considered as an outcast and nobody really likes her or talks to her because she is different than the others. She doesn't really get bullied but everybody ignores her and doesn't really care about her except Heather. But first Melinda doesn’t really like Heather and I think she’s hanging out with her just to not feel like a loner in the corner with any friends. Second, Heather is also hanging out with Melinda just to not be alone till she founds a group that likes her and she isn’t really acting like a real friend towards Melinda and doesn’t stand up for her, I think that later on in the book Heather is probably also going to ignore Melinda because she's joining a group called "The Marthas", who are supposed to help and not judge people but they are already judging Melinda about her lips. Melinda's social issues are kind of the major theme in the book because the book talks about her life and her feelings about being an outcast.  The thing is she feels like an outcast but doesn’t really do something to make it stop and that’s a little why I do not like this book at all. I also do not like this book because it is too depressing and kind of boring and it also makes me think a lot about my past and why people ignores or talk badly about other people when we are almost all the same and sometimes they know nothing about that person. In this novel, Heather has a secret about something that happened to her during a party last summer but the author doesn’t really give us any clues or some kind of answers to our questions and it kind of frustrate me because I really want to know what happened and I think that the author wanted to create some kind of suspense and atmosphere to make the readers enjoy her novel more but obviously it did not work. For the moment I really do not like the book but maybe it will get better latter on in this book or towards the end.