Enduring Understanding

Laurie Halse Anderson does a stupendous job of incorporating her characters into her stories. Anderson has a way of intertwining real life problems that humans face into her work. For example, Laurie Halse Anderson wrote a nonfiction novel called Shout, which is about her experience with sexual assault. In her fiction book Speak, Anderson incorporates her experience through her main character Melinda. Melinda shows all of the signs of someone who has been through sexual assault and does a good job on educating readers on what to look for in sexual assault victims. Melinda slowly loses all of her friends due to her massive depression. She even gets to the point where she goes home and cuts herself in order to cope with her complex emotions. Anderson uses Melinda as a beacon for those who are also struggling with depression and sexual assault. At the end of the novel, Melinda stands up to her assaulter and overcomes her struggles. Melinda is a symbol of overcoming when it comes to hard to approach situations. As Laurie Halse Anderson has dealt with this experience herself, she is able to exemplify the difficult to navigate emotions that come with sexual assault. If it wasn’t for her experience, her portrayal of Melinda would not have been as accurate and she would not feel as close to the character as she currently does. 

In another novel from her, The Impossible Knife of Memory, Anderson incorporates PTSD into the main character's dad, Andy, as he deals with flashbacks from the war. Hayley, the main character, is a senior in high school who has to navigate through taking care of her father who has PTSD. Her father has both good days and bad days. On his good days, He is bright and wants to spend time with his daughter. On his bad days, he is possibly black out drunk and extremely suicidal. PTSD in veterans is a topic that does not currently have a lot of attention towards it. Anderson shows the complexity of living with someone with PTSD as she goes through multiple situations where she has to sacrifice her friendships and hang out with people to make sure that her dad didn’t kill himself. She deals with dynamic emotions as she takes care of her father. There are even times where she feels like she has nowhere to turn to. Towards the end of the book, Hayley talks her dad off of a cliff and stops him from committing suicide. Her father feels like he has nowhere to turn to since he is constantly dealing with flashbacks from the war. Anderson does a good job of highlighting the almost bipolar days that come with severe PTSD.

Laurie Halse Anderson employs setting in a way that symbolizes the main themes that she is expressing throughout her novels. To illustrate, in the novel Speak, Anderson utilizes many different settings to provide the emotions that come with those environments. The main character, Melinda, is at high school in most of the scenes of the book. This setting is where she faces a lot of alienation and isolation after she was sexually assaulted over the summer. Anderson uses the art room as a place that Melinda can escape and truly grow and navigate through her emotions. Meanwhile, her home is a symbol of imbalance and inner turmoil. Throughout the novel, there are many scenes where the relationship between her parents is strained and lacking emotional connection. This rubs off on Melinda because she doesn’t want to stress her parents out considering they are already on the brink of divorce. Her parents are also emotionally distant from Melinda, which only enhances her emotional struggles. Another honorable mention is the “silent” spaces, such as the empty classrooms and hallways. This is another symbol of isolation that Melinda experiences throughout the novel. Overall, Laurie Halse Anderson is very successful in conveying values that are associated with the setting throughout the novel. 

Meanwhile, in the novel The Impossible Knife of Memory, there are many settings that show the issues that Hayley and her father deal with. For example, Hayley and her father live a very nomadic lifestyle, meaning they never stayed in one place. They were constantly on the road driving and never settling down, which was a symbol of how her father could never escape his past and his memories from the war. Every time his flashbacks and his PTSD would get very intense, they would move onto the next place to live until his PTSD got bad again. The town of Snow Hill is another setting where they show the emotional instability that exists throughout the novel. Snow Hill is a very close-knit community and is a place where Hayley can finally start to find some stability. Snow Hill forces Hayley to face reality and focus on her friendships and her father’s illness. There are times in Snow Hill where Hayley is alienated in school which only makes dealing with her father’s PTSD worse. Their home in Snow Hill is a huge symbol of trying to find peace. Their house is a place that her father wanted to fix up, but he keeps trashing it when he has his black out drunk episodes. This kind of setting makes it hard to find peace as it’s a symbol of always trying to fix something, but never feeling complete. Laurie Halse Anderson utilizes these settings overall to instill emotions in the reader to sympathize with the character in the settings that they’re in. 

Laurie Halse Anderson has a way of utilizing plot and structure in her novels that invokes the reader’s emotions and pushes people to think about the central message of her novels. Anderson structured her book Shout in a way where there were a lot of short journal entries. Typically, this kind of structure will tie a reader in and want to keep reading. By doing this, she is able to present her experience with sexual assault in a way that interests the reader and invokes emotions at the same time. This feeling can be applied to her novel Speak as well. The book immediately starts with the sexual assault that Melinda, the main character, goes through. This happens in the forest where she is isolated with a senior as she is coming into the high school as a freshman. From here on out, she continues to be alienated at school as she is suffering with the internal emotions that come with sexual assault. Andy, the person who assaulted Melinda, starts to antagonize her until she starts to cut herself to deal with the emotions she is facing. At the end of the novel, Andy locks her in a janitor closet and attempt to rape her. Luckily, by this point Melinda has found her self worth and she punches Andy in the face. Anderson showed Melinda’s self growth throughout the novel, which shows readers that Anderson has a way of positioning events in the plot that gets her values across in the most effective way possible. 

As for Laurie Halse Anderson’s other novel The Impossible Knife of Memory, Anderson utilizes the structure of the book to make certain events hit the hardest. For example, Hayley, the main character, is trying to find emotional stability after she moves to Snow Hill with her father. She slowly starts to make friendships with people, which is really hard for her considering they have been on the road for most of her life due to her father suffering from PTSD. When her father starts to have flashback episodes where he either tears their house apart or attempts to kill himself, Hayley has to drop everything that she is doing to make sure her father is okay. This leads to Hayley having increased anxiety as she is trying to navigate through her senior year of high school. Slowly, her father’s behavior starts to dissipate as he seems to become relatively happy again. It turns out that he was close to killing himself which was why he was so happy. Luckily, Hayley finds her dad right before he is about to kill himself. It takes some persuasion, but she is able to talk her father away from the edge and he does not end up killing himself. This event ultimately tightens their relationship and they grow their bond with one another. Laurie Halse Anderson structures her books in these ways to highlight the important moments by having them happen repeatedly and emphasizing what’s important in a way that leaves the reader with a powerful message.

Laurie Halse Anderson utilizes speakers in her novels in order to give a voice to trauma and healing, as well as first person narrative to deepen emotional connection with the characters. In one of her most famous fiction novels Speak, Anderson uses Melinda, the main character, as a voice of trauma and healing. At the beginning of the novel she was sexually assaulted going into her freshman year of high school. The reader sees this character navigate through many dynamic emotions and learn how to deal with the trauma of her sexual assault experience. As she goes through her experience, she slowly learns to cope and live with what has happened to her. At the end of the novel, the main character self reflects and punches her rapist before he attempts to rape her again. Having a speaker be the voice of healing from a traumatic experience is a theme that is common in a lot of Laurie’s books. Her nonfiction book Shout, shows her experience with sexual assault. However, she does not sulk in her emotions and becomes depressed because of this situation. Instead, she flourishes and stands as a voice for other girls who don’t have the strength to stand up for themselves. 

As for the novel The Impossible Knife of Memory, Anderson utilizes speakers from a first person perspective to truly create a deep emotional connection with the reader. Hayley, the main character, deals with a lot of stressful situations in her senior year of high school due to her father who has PTSD from being in the military. There are times where Hayley finds it difficult to navigate through the emotions she is feeling when her father has severe flashbacks to the military and ends up doing regretful things as a result. Laurie uses Hayley to show how difficult certain situations can be, and yet there will always be a way to work through them, no matter how hard the situation may be. At the end of the novel, Hayley talks her father off of a cliff as he is on the brink of suicide. Luckily, she is successful in her attempt and saves him from killing himself. If this event hadn’t been told in first person, the reader would not have seen the inner conflicts that Hayley was dealing with at the time. Laurie Halse Anderson uses first person perspective in almost all of her books, and this perspective always strengthens her stories rather than being a distraction. She does a really good job of employing these different techniques in her writing that only further strengthens the literature she is working on.