symbolism in speak essay

Laurie Halse Anderson

Ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions, trees, seeds, plants, and forests.

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… read analysis of Trees, Seeds, Plants, and Forests

Birds appear multiple times in the text of Speak —the most memorable of these appearances, of course, being the doomed turkey that Melinda’s mother attempts to cook on Christmas. After Melinda’s mother ruins the bird… read analysis of Birds

Melinda’s Closet

Melinda feels unsafe and isolated in high school; and she responds by isolating herself even further, making an unused janitor’s closet into a hiding place where she can cut class and avoid seeing the peers… read analysis of Melinda’s Closet

Melinda’s Bedroom

While Melinda’s closet is a haven for her hide from her new, traumatized existence, her bedroom is a symbol of the childhood innocence that she has lost. Adorned with pink roses, the room looks like… read analysis of Melinda’s Bedroom

At the beginning of Speak , Melinda despises mirrors . She thinks her reflection looks ugly in her bedroom mirror, and covers up the mirror in her closet with a poster of Maya Angelou. In… read analysis of Mirrors

Melinda hates her appearance, but is especially disgusted by her ragged lips , which she can’t stop picking at and chewing. In a novel called Speak , of course, it is significant that Melinda is… read analysis of Lips

Melinda is hyperaware of blood throughout the novel. An incredibly charged symbol, blood represents both life and death, and also is especially connected to the idea of adult womanhood (because of menstruation). Blood is also… read analysis of Blood

Water, Ice, and Melting

Images of water and ice are prevalent throughout Speak . This symbol is appropriate because Melinda is, in effect, frozen. She is cold to all those around her, from Heather to her teachers to her… read analysis of Water, Ice, and Melting

Warmth and Sunlight

Just as water and ice symbolize how dead and frozen Melinda feels, warmth and sunlight represent moments in which she feels as if she might be alive inside after all. As winter turns to spring… read analysis of Warmth and Sunlight

Poster of Maya Angelou

Although Melinda doesn’t know it, her choice of a poster of Maya Angelou to cover her own reflection in her janitor’s closet is an appropriate one. A famous African American writer, Angelou writes eloquently about… read analysis of Poster of Maya Angelou

Jotted Lines

A Collection Of Essays

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson – Analysis – Essay

In Anderson’s novel Speak, the protagonist’s English teacher remarks: ‘‘It’s all about SYMBOLISM.’’ The teacher is referring to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s work. However, because of the stress placed on the word symbolism (placing the word in all capitals), one might question whether Anderson is referring to her own writing as well. If she is, what symbols does she create and how does she use them? 

Literary symbolism is the use of a person, object, image, word, or event that suggests a deeper meaning beyond its literal one. For example, the snowstorms through which the protagonist of this novel must walk are both literal storms and a symbol of conditions in Melinda’s life. The snow blots out much of the landscape, exemplifying Melinda’s feelings of isolation. The harsh coldness of the blizzard symbolizes Melinda’s struggle to find warmth in her personal relationships. The snowstorm is just one of the many symbols that the author uses to give more depth to her story. Symbols help readers to become more involved in what the characters are experiencing emotionally. The word isolation, for instance, is very abstract or intangible. Readers might grasp the meaning on a rational level but not know what it feels like to be isolated. The symbol of a person walking through ice and blowing snow provides a more physical expression, something the reader can latch on to. 

As readers examine the text of Anderson’s novel, they will come across many symbols, but three stand out. First, there is the animal symbol. A turkey appears on Thanksgiving Day. The Thanksgiving holiday itself is a symbol. In American culture, Thanksgiving is a day of family reunions. For Melinda, though, the day is anything but. For this family, whose normal mode of daily communication consists of notes to one another left in the kitchen, Thanksgiving is much like any other day. Mother is called away in the middle of preparing the meal and abandons the family. Dad steps in as cook but botches the meal so badly that the turkey must be thrown in the trash. All of this symbolizes the dysfunction of Melinda’s family. 

However disastrous Thanksgiving Day is, Melinda attempts to salvage a part of it. She gathers the bones from the trash and takes them into her art class. She wants to make something out of the carcass, the main structure of the turkey. She also finds a small doll and pops the head off. She smacks a piece of tape across the doll’s mouth and places the head on top of the bones. She attaches a plastic knife and fork to the doll’s head to make them look like legs. With the tape across the mouth, the doll obviously is a symbol of Melinda. She feels she cannot speak about what has happened to her. Does she also feel that her flesh has been stripped away as the turkey’s has? She has been raped, which means her body has been violated. She might also be feeling that she has little protection between her outer and inner self. Her emotions are so strong that she is constantly feeling like she might burst open. So the turkey skeleton could be a reflection of how she sees herself emotionally. It is through this symbol of the bones and the doll head that the author expresses Melinda’s pain. Using this symbol, readers can grasp a better understanding of how that pain feels. 

A second strong symbol in this story is the abandoned janitor’s closet. Melinda needs a refuge, a place to hide, a tiny room where she does not have to be anyone. She does not have to be a student, a daughter, or an ex-friend. She can just be a nobody. She does not have to define herself for those few minutes or hours that she hides in the closet. She does not have to think. The closet symbolizes a space between her present mental anguish as she faces the world and her memories of what happened to her. Or it might be a respite between who she was and who she is yet to be. It is a place void of anything that isMelinda except for the things she chooses to bring into that place. 

Melinda claims this small space by cleaning out the cobwebs and bringing in some personal objects. One of the main objects is a poster of the author and poet Maya Angelou. But there may be something other than Angelou’s literary accomplishments that attracts Melinda to her. There also may be a symbolic reason why the author chose Angelou over so many other female authors. The reason could be something that Melinda and Angelou have in common. In 1970, Angelou published her autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. In this book, Angelou recounts the rape that occurred when she was eight years old. The rapist was an acquaintance, who was later murdered by a gang of men. The effect of the rape and the murder, which Angelou felt she had caused, led to the author’s inability to speak. Thus Angelou is likely to have become a symbol of the terror Melinda is experiencing. Melinda might be using the poster of Angelou to give her hope. Angelou, despite the trauma in her early life, was able to not only move past the experience but to excel in life. Angelou could be Melinda’s symbol of inspiration. 

Into this closet, Melinda also brings her art pieces. It is through her art that Melinda attempts to reclaim herself. As her art teacher has expressed it, his students have the opportunity to find their souls through art. Melinda has so many questions about herself that she no longer knows who she is. Did she do something wrong to bring on the sexual assault? Why did she not run away? Why did she not scream? Is she just as guilty as her assailant is? Was she misguided when she called the police? Should she tell someone what really happened? Would they believe her? The creation of art and the source of emotions both come from the same place, the subconscious. Though she might not consciously understand how her art projects are helping her, her teacher does. He continues to encourage her. Slowly she begins to feel an emotional reaction to the art pieces she creates and starts gaining confidence. She brings these works into the closet so she can look at them, as if to read them. It is possible that there in the closet, where she does not have to define herself through other people’s perceptions, she can see her art more clearly. She is free to explore her artistic expressions with new eyes. 

The third major symbol in this novel is the tree. In art class, Mr. Freeman has told his students that each must blindly pull a piece of paper out of a container. On the pieces of paper are the names of some random objects. The paper that Melinda chooses has the word tree on it. She believes, at first, that this object is too simple. But when she tries to draw a tree, to make a work of art that stirs the emotions, it is not as easy as she first perceived. Her initial attempts at drawing a tree remind her of how she drew in elementary school. Regressing into an earlier, more innocent time of her life, she draws stick-figure type trees, which Mr. Freeman criticizes for not being very realistic. Melinda’s trees are too perfect, he tells her. Real trees have crooked limbs, blemished leaves, and decayed spots on them. The difference between Melinda’s perception of a tree and Mr. Freeman’s creates part of the meaning behind this symbol. Melinda is trying to live in a fantasy world, drawing perfectly formed trees, as a child imagines them. Like her trees, Melinda would like to return to that place where she was still innocent. The sexual assault, however, will not allow this. Her innocence has been stolen. Mr. Freeman is telling her that she must draw a tree from the place where she is now. She must look at trees from a different, more realistic place. She is moving into an adult space and must no longer look at things so naively. 

As Melinda ponders this, she notices a tree in her front yard. A portion of the tree is rotting. If the rot is not cut out, the tree could die. A tree doctor is called in, and the diseased portion of the tree is removed. At another point in the novel, Melinda wishes that a doctor could go into her brain and cut out her memories, her damaged parts. So it is through the tree in her yard that Melinda realizes that she must cut out her memories by facing them rather than trying to repress them or run away from them. 

In the end, after many attempts at creating an emotionally moving depiction of a tree, Melinda finds success. ‘‘My tree is definitely breathing,’’ she says. ‘‘This one is not perfectly symmetrical. The bark is rough.’’ She adds, ‘‘One of the lower branches is sick.’’ She tells herself that the sick branch will have to drop some day in order for the rest of the tree to get stronger. Then she continues, ‘‘The new growth is the best part.’’ It is obvious, with these statements, that the author has used the tree to symbolize her protagonist. Melinda has faced her demons in her confrontation with her assailant. She fought him off. Afterward, she senses her own new growth through the tree she is creating. ‘‘And I’m not going to let it kill me,’’ she says, referring to the rape. ‘‘I can grow.’’ 

The author has created symbols for her protagonist to learn from. In the process, readers will learn from them too. Anderson has thus created depth, enabling readers to relate more closely to Melinda and giving them something to take with them. The story therefore becomes more than just words on a page. Through the use of symbolism, readers feel as if they take away a shared experience.

Source Credits:

Sara Constantakis (Editor), Novels for Students – Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Commonly Studied Novels, Volume 31, Laurie Halse Anderson, Published by Gale, Cengage Learning, 2010.

Joyce M. Hart, Critical Essay on Speak, in Novels for Students, Gale, Cengage Learning, 2010.

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by Laurie Halse Anderson

Speak essay questions.

Examine the role that female sexuality plays in Melinda's world. How does it affect Melinda differently from those around her?

After the rape, Melinda notices the sexual objectification of women all around her, whether it be the celebration of the two-sided, sexually promiscuous cheerleaders or Heather's swimsuit modeling career. Melinda, as "Outcast" removes herself from her world, partly in order to remove herself from this system of objectification. As an outside observer, Melinda takes on a socially asexual role and is able to effectively critique the gender breakdown at her high school.

What role does David Petrakis play in the novel? What is the significance of his character?

David Petrakis is Melinda's smart and outspoken lab partner. She admires him from the beginning of the novel, when she explains that he is never bullied, even though he seems like the type that would be. As the story moves forward, David Petrakis challenges Mr. Neck and helps Melinda to do the same. He becomes a symbol of what Melinda would like to be: strong, well-spoken, independent. David is an able communicator, unlike Melinda. She calls even his silence "eloquent." Her crush on him develops not only because he is one of the only people to talk to her, but also because he possesses the personality she aspires to have. You may wish to consider the significance of this position being filled by a male character, instead of a female one.

What role does confession play in the novel?

Speak is a story about the struggle to confess. Melinda tries initially to hide behind silence, but as the novel progresses it becomes increasingly clear that she must confess before healing. There are two confessions: one to Rachel and one to Mr. Freeman at the very end of the book. While the one to Rachel is written and at first appears unsuccessful, it nevertheless has healing qualities, and ultimately leads to their presumed reconciliation. We see a stark difference in Melinda's actions and thoughts. The ultimate confession, the spoken one to Mr. Freeman, comes after everyone has already learned of Melinda's secret. The act of confessing in this novel, however, is more important than what is confessed. You may wish to address the fact that confessing sets Melinda free even though she is the victim, not the perpetrator of the crime.

Can Speak be read as a feminist novel? Why or why not?

Speak certainly contains many feminist overtones. Melinda regains her voice and strength after being silenced and dominated by a male. She writes a report on the suffragettes and then stands in front of the class protesting in what she believes to be a suffragette manner. Melinda also works hard to distinguish herself from the traditional gender roles at her high school, and she regularly satirizes the characters that happily fill those roles.

What are the results and consequences of speaking in the novel? How does this affect Melinda?

Melinda witnesses two very different reactions to speaking/speaking up. In some instances, she sees people humiliated, such as Rachel who speaks up against symbolism in English class. These instances reaffirm Melinda's belief that speaking only hurts you, never helps you. However, in other cases, such as David Petrakis' stance against Mr. Neck, Melinda observes the power of speaking up. These instances ultimately encourage her to grow and speak again.

Melinda often reminisces about childhood. What does this say about Melinda?

Melinda's childhood memories do not serve simply to indicate that Melinda was once happy, but now is not. To the contrary, they serve a much more complex purpose. Her reminiscences show her attention to identity and the fluidity of identity change. To Melinda, these identity changes have mostly been negative. There are also times when Melinda wishes to protect her friends from this change. When she sees Rachel kissing Andy Evans, Melinda upsets herself by remembering when she and Rachel were kids. Because Melinda has so far found adolescence so painful, she has a hard time letting go of her childhood, which seems idyllic in comparison. This contributes to the inability she feels to grow until the end of the novel.

What is the function of Melinda's closet?

Throughout the novel, Melinda wants to deflect attention from herself and conceal her thoughts. It thus makes sense that her safe haven would be an abandoned closet where she can shut herself away and see nobody. The closet is also a symbol traditionally used in the homosexual world. It functions similarly for Melinda. While she is in the closet, she has not opened up about her secret and not crossed a socially-charged line. It is only after she decides to leave her closet behind, and effectively "come out," that she is willing to confess, and can show her inner voice to her peers.

What is the significance of Mr. Freeman acting as the recipient of Melinda's first spoken confession?

Mr. Freeman is first and foremost the character that most obviously reaches out to Melinda and emphasizes the importance of recognizing and expressing emotions, not stifling them. She rejects his help at first, but eventually decides to confess to him. This is a sign of her growth as a person. Secondly, however, a confession to Mr. Freeman is significant because it falls in line with the traditional young adult novel form. Ultimately, in order to heal, Melinda must reach out to an older, wiser adult.

Discuss the importance of the intertextual references in Speak .

The most important references are to The Scarlet Letter and Maya Angelou. The Scarlet Letter features a woman who is exiled from society for sexual reasons. The relationship between this story and Melinda is obvious--though her classmates don't realize it, they have exiled her beacuse of the consequences of a sexual act. Maya Angelou's face appears on a poster in Melinda's closet. Angelou is known for her autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings , a coming-of -age story that illustrates overcoming racism and moving past the trauma of being raped at a young age. She not only admitted what happened to her, but did so to the whole world, and so she serves as a role model for Melinda as she tries to find her voice.

Examine the role that mirrors play in the novel.

Melinda posses a distinct dislike for mirrors and her own reflection throughout the novel. This dislike indicates the self-loathing that Melinda feels after the rape. She turns the mirror around in her bedroom and covers the mirror in her closet. At the end of the novel, the shattering of the mirror, and Melinda's use of one of its broken shards to threaten Andy Evans, demonstrates a conquering of her self-loathing, and a turning of the loathing to the appropriate object, Andy.

Speak Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Speak is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

What aspect of The Scarlet Letter does Hairwoman seem obsessed with?

Hairwoman is obsessed with the symbolism in The Scarlet Letter.

How is Mr. Freeman keeping track of grades in his art class?

Mr. Frreman doesn't give grades, but rather, evaluates his students' work and paints his evaluations in a list on the wall.

what problems are people having with mr.freemans assignment? what advice does he give to help them? from pages 20-26

Mr. Freeman's assignment is rather abstract. He wants students to pick an object that metaphorically speaks to the person who views it. I think Mr. Freeman tells them to listen to themselves.

Study Guide for Speak

Speak study guide contains a biography of Laurie Halse Anderson, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About Speak
• Speak Summary
• Character List

Essays for Speak

Speak essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson.

• The Power of Words: A Speak Analysis
• From Wishbones to Wings: The Symbolism of Birds in "Speak"
• The Factors That Helped Melinda Recover
• Sexual Assault in Speak

Lesson Plan for Speak

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to Speak
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
• Speak Bibliography

Wikipedia Entries for Speak

• Introduction
• Literature and film
• Organizations

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Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapters 1-21

Part 2, Chapters 22-44

Part 3, Chapters 45-63

Part 4, Chapters 64-89

Character Analysis

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Symbolism — Birds Symbolism in Laurie Halse Anderson’s Novel Speak

Birds Symbolism in Laurie Halse Anderson's Novel Speak

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Symbolism in Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

A symbol is a representation of something else, often times a material object signifying something abstract. Laurie Halse Anderson’s young-adult novel Speak is packed with symbolism. Trees are one of the most prevalent symbols in the novel, appearing in almost every chapter of the book. Trees represent life and growth for the main protagonist in the story Melinda, and are symbolic of her journey through her mental recovery after being raped. The author’s reoccurring use of the tree allows the readers to understand Melinda in a different way, beyond the narrator’s literal words. Anderson’s use of the tree aids the reader in seeing Melinda’s suffering and recovery. Towards the beginning of the novel as Melinda is assigned a tree for her yearlong art project, she begins to create trees that parallel her emotional state. At first she struggles to bring her tree to life, the trees she constructs are bare, lifeless, and lacking detail. Her inability to draw life and details and express the complexity of a tree, is comparable to her incompetence to live and share details to others. Ever since Melinda’s rape, she struggles with opening up to the other people in her life. Several aspects of her first few art projects represent her pain and depression. After being picked on by a few girls at a pep rally, Melinda’s trees reflect her misery. “For a solid week, ever since the pep rally, I’ve been painting watercolors of trees that have been hit by lightning. I try to paint them so they are nearly dead, but not totally.” (Anderson 30). Without her sharing her feelings about how poorly she was treated, the readers understand her emotions by her artwork and the use of the tree. The fact that they have been hurt but still continue hanging on is symbolic of Melinda’s experience and how defeated she feels. Towards the middle of the novel, arborists cut away a dead branch from a tree in order to save the rest of it. This symbolizes what Melinda faces in letting her pain overtake every portion of her life. She realizes her life needs pruning just as much as the tree in her yard does. It is evident Melinda views the tree being pruned in comparison to her past that rips her apart mentally. While she was being raped she couldn’t move or escape which parallels the tree’s situation. “He’s killing the tree. He’ll only leave a stump. The tree is dying. There’s nothing to do or say. The chain saw murderer swings down with a grin. He doesn’t even care.” (Anderson 187) Through the author’s metaphors the readers can interpret the thoughts of the main character without it being directly stated. In the end as Melinda finally opens up about what had happened to her, she abandons what was eating her from the inside.Melinda recognizes her inability to change the past, realizes she’s okay, and learns to move forward and think more positively. Melinda’s art project is less depressing and dark as a reflection to her pain, and more bright and cheerful; an indication of her optimism. This is proven

as Melinda states “My tree is definitely breathing; little shallow breaths like it shot up through the ground this morning.” (Anderson 196)The art teacher Mr. Freeman allows Melinda to express herself and reveal what is inside of her without forcing her to use literal words. Authors often use symbols as a representation of a particular object or an expression of an idea. Laurie Halse Anderson, the author of Speak, incorporates many instances of symbolism as well as parallelism in her novel to convey certain thoughts and themes. In addition, her use of metaphors and her use of the tree as a symbol allow the readers of her story to understand the main character beyond what her literal traits and emotions are. By recognizing the heavy symbolic affect the tree has on Melinda’s life experiences and situations, the reader can understand what the author attempts to imply throughout the story. Melinda’s reoccurring art project reflects the events in her life, and are in strong comparison to her feelings at the time.

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Definition of Symbolism

Symbolism is a literary device that refers to the use of symbols in a literary work. A symbol is something that stands for or suggests something else; it represents something beyond literal meaning. In literature, a symbol can be a word, object , action, character , or concept that embodies and evokes a range of additional meaning and significance.

For example, in his poem “ Fire and Ice ,” Robert Frost utilizes symbolism to indicate to readers how the world may be destroyed:

Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I’ve tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice.

In the poem, fire symbolizes destructive and consuming emotions such as jealousy, desire for power , anger, and impulsivity. Ice, in the poem, symbolizes destructive and withholding emotions such as hate, indifference, loneliness, and isolation. Of course, the poet indicates to the reader that the literal meanings of fire and ice make them capable of destroying and ending the world. However, it’s the symbolism of fire and ice that enhances the meaning and significance of the poem.

Common Examples of Symbolism in Everyday Life

Everyday words, objects, and even concepts often have more than a single meaning. Across time, certain aspects of everyday life and experience evolve in meaning and associated significance, making them symbols of something besides what they actually are. Here are some common examples of symbolism in everyday life:

• rainbow–symbolizes hope and promise
• red rose–symbolizes love and romance
• four-leaf clover–symbolizes good luck or fortune
• wedding ring–symbolizes commitment and matrimony
• red, white, blue–symbolizes American patriotism
• green traffic light–symbolizes “go” or proceed
• tree blossoms–symbolize spring season
• Pilgrim hat–symbolizes Thanksgiving holiday
• dollar sign–symbolizes money, earnings, wealth
• image of shopping cart–symbolizes online purchases

Examples of Types of Symbolism and Their Effects

Writers utilize many types of symbolism, both as a way to convey meaning to their overall readership and as a method of allowing individual readers to make their own interpretations and discover meaning. In addition, different types of symbols create different effects for readers, though the overall goal of symbolism as a literary device is to enhance the reader’s experience with literature.

Here are some examples of types of symbolism and their effects:

• emotion : symbols often evoke emotional responses in readers, allowing them to invest in the plot and characters. This emotional effect of symbolism also creates a lasting impression for the reader of the literary work.
• Imagery : symbols can create imagery and provide visual elements that allow readers to understand complex literary themes. This also has a beneficial effect for writers so that they don’t feel an overreliance on language to explain their intended meaning.
• thematic connection: symbols can connect themes for readers within a single literary work and across literature itself. This allows for greater understanding of literature as an art form.
• Character attributes: symbols can represent different attributes of characters, both in a literal and figurative sense. This has an effect for readers in that they can identify character traits and understand their actions based on symbolism in the literary work.
• deeper meaning:  symbolism also allows writers to convey deeper meaning in their work for the reader. This creates a layered effect of understanding so that different readers can find their own individual significance in a literary work, and individual readers can find different levels of significance with each exposure to the literary work.

Famous Examples of Symbolism in Movies

Symbolism is a device utilized by many film artists as well. Symbolism in cinema allows the audience to make connections and understand meaning, adding to both the entertainment and thematic value of a film.

Here are some famous examples of symbolism in well-known movies:

• white cowboy hat = hero in classic Westerns
• mockingbird = innocence in  To Kill a Mockingbird
• Balloons = hopes and dreams in  Disney’s Up
• feathers = beginnings and endings in Forrest Gump
• Yellow Brick Road = street paved with gold in  The Wizard of Oz
• coin toss = fate, chance, free will in  No Country for Old Men
• Fog = confusion and the unknown in  Apocalypse Now
• cat = home and belonging in  Breakfast at Tiffany’s
• doors = separation and transition in  The Godfather
• deer = prey and vulnerability in  Get Out

Difference Between Symbolism and Motif

Symbolism and motif are both effective literary devices that can appear to be synonymous or interchangeable. However, these devices serve different purposes in literature. Symbolism, as a device, utilizes symbols such that the concept of a word or object represents something beyond its literal meaning. Symbols can be featured singularly or several times in literature. A motif is a recurring element, in the form of an image, phrase , situation, or concept, that is integral to the plot and appears several times throughout a literary work and emphasizes or draws attention to the overall theme .

Examples of Symbolism in Literature

Symbolism is an effective literary device utilized by writers to connect with readers and allow them to actively participate in understanding the deeper meaning of a literary work. Writers use symbolism to evoke emotion, create a sensory experience, and to demonstrate artistic use of language so that words have both literal and figurative meanings. Here are some examples of symbolism in literature:

Example 1:  The Glass Menagerie  (Tennessee Williams)

Yes, movies! Look at them — All of those glamorous people — having adventures — hogging it all, gobbling the whole thing up! You know what happens? People go to the movies instead of moving! Hollywood characters are supposed to have all the adventures for everybody in America , while everybody in America sits in a dark room and watches them have them! Yes, until there’s a war. That’s when adventure becomes available to the masses! Everyone’s dish, not only Gable’s! Then the people in the dark room come out of the dark room to have some adventures themselves — Goody, goody! — It’s our turn now, to go to the south Sea Island — to make a safari — to be exotic, far-off!

In Williams’s play , Tom’s character frequently goes to the movies to escape the monotony and pressure of his life at home with his mother and sister. Therefore, movies offer Tom both a literal and figurative escape from his home, though it is a passive escape in darkness with no true experience of adventure. The movies symbolize Tom’s dreams and fantasies as well as their unattainability and manufactured reality. In this passage, Williams also makes artistic and ironic use of the word “movies” in that the act of going to the movies actually makes Tom feel more stagnant, stuck, and unmoving.

Example 2:  The Lesson  (Toni Cade Bambara)

Miss Moore lines us up in front of the mailbox where we started from, seem like years ago, and I got a headache for thinkin so hard. And we lean all over each other so we can hold up under the draggy ass lecture she always finishes us off with at the end before we thank her for borin us to tears. But she just looks at us like she readin tea leaves. Finally she say, “Well, what did you think of F.A.0. Schwarz?” Rosie Giraffe mumbles, “White folks crazy.”

In Bambara’s short story , the famous New York City toy store F.A.O. Schwarz is a symbol for economic wealth and frivolous spending. Miss Moore’s character, by bringing a group of underprivileged black kids to the toy store, also wants F.A.O. Schwarz to be viewed as a symbol of systemic racial and social division in America as well as monetary separation. By exposing this group of kids to such an outrageously expensive toy store, Miss Moore intends to teach them a lesson and instill a deeper concept of failed American opportunity and equality through the symbolism of F.A.O. Schwarz.

Example 3:  The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)

And as I sat there, brooding on the old unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night . Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning—— So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

The color green is a strong motif in Fitzgerald’s novel , used frequently to reinforce the theme of money, wealth, and materialism. The green light across the water from Gatsby’s home does play a role in this color motif; however, Fitzgerald uses the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock as symbolism in the novel. In fact, as the narrator Nick Carraway mentions in the above passage, Gatsby “believes” in the green light because of what he feels it symbolizes.

The light not only represents Gatsby’s future hopes and dreams, especially in terms of his love for Daisy, but the green color of the light symbolizes, to Gatsby, permission to follow and pursue these hopes and dreams. Despite the knowledge that Daisy is a married woman, Gatsby views the green light as guidance and a signal to proceed with his futile quest to win Daisy.

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Guest Essay

In Medicine, the Morally Unthinkable Too Easily Comes to Seem Normal

By Carl Elliott

Dr. Elliott teaches medical ethics at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of the forthcoming book “The Occasional Human Sacrifice: Medical Experimentation and the Price of Saying No,” from which this essay is adapted.

Here is the way I remember it: The year is 1985, and a few medical students are gathered around an operating table where an anesthetized woman has been prepared for surgery. The attending physician, a gynecologist, asks the group: “Has everyone felt a cervix? Here’s your chance.” One after another, we take turns inserting two gloved fingers into the unconscious woman’s vagina.

Had the woman consented to a pelvic exam? Did she understand that when the lights went dim she would be treated like a clinical practice dummy, her genitalia palpated by a succession of untrained hands? I don’t know. Like most medical students, I just did as I was told.

Last month the Department of Health and Human Services issued new guidance requiring written informed consent for pelvic exams and other intimate procedures performed under anesthesia. Much of the force behind the new requirement came from distressed medical students who saw these pelvic exams as wrong and summoned the courage to speak out.

Whether the guidance will actually change clinical practice I don’t know. Medical traditions are notoriously difficult to uproot, and academic medicine does not easily tolerate ethical dissent. I doubt the medical profession can be trusted to reform itself.

What is it that leads a rare individual to say no to practices that are deceptive, exploitative or harmful when everyone else thinks they are fine? For a long time I assumed that saying no was mainly an issue of moral courage. The relevant question was: If you are a witness to wrongdoing, will you be brave enough to speak out?

But then I started talking to insiders who had blown the whistle on abusive medical research. Soon I realized that I had overlooked the importance of moral perception. Before you decide to speak out about wrongdoing, you have to recognize it for what it is.

This is not as simple as it seems. Part of what makes medical training so unsettling is how often you are thrust into situations in which you don’t really know how to behave. Nothing in your life up to that point has prepared you to dissect a cadaver, perform a rectal exam or deliver a baby. Never before have you seen a psychotic patient involuntarily sedated and strapped to a bed or a brain-dead body wheeled out of a hospital room to have its organs harvested for transplantation. Your initial reaction is often a combination of revulsion, anxiety and self-consciousness.

To embark on a career in medicine is like moving to a foreign country where you do not understand the customs, rituals, manners or language. Your main concern on arrival is how to fit in and avoid causing offense. This is true even if the local customs seem backward or cruel. What’s more, this particular country has an authoritarian government and a rigid status hierarchy where dissent is not just discouraged but also punished. Living happily in this country requires convincing yourself that whatever discomfort you feel comes from your own ignorance and lack of experience. Over time, you learn how to assimilate. You may even come to laugh at how naïve you were when you first arrived.

A rare few people hang onto that discomfort and learn from it. When Michael Wilkins and William Bronston started working at the Willowbrook State School in Staten Island as young doctors in the early 1970s, they found thousands of mentally disabled children condemned to the most horrific conditions imaginable: naked children rocking and moaning on concrete floors in puddles of their own urine; an overpowering stench of illness and filth; a research unit where children were deliberately infected with hepatitis A and B.

“It was truly an American concentration camp,” Dr. Bronston told me. Yet when he and Dr. Wilkins tried to enlist Willowbrook doctors and nurses to reform the institution, they were met with indifference or hostility. It seemed as if no one else on the medical staff could see what they saw. It was only when Dr. Wilkins went to a reporter and showed the world what was happening behind the Willowbrook walls that anything began to change.

When I asked Dr. Bronston how it was possible for doctors and nurses to work at Willowbrook without seeing it as a crime scene, he told me it began with the way the institution was structured and organized. “Medically secured, medically managed, doctor-validated,” he said. Medical professionals just accommodated themselves to the status quo. “You get with the program because that’s what you’re being hired to do,” he said.

One of the great mysteries of human behavior is how institutions create social worlds where unthinkable practices come to seem normal. This is as true of academic medical centers as it is of prisons and military units. When we are told about a horrific medical research scandal, we assume that we would see it just as the whistle-blower Peter Buxtun saw the Tuskegee syphilis study : an abuse so shocking that only a sociopath could fail to perceive it.

Yet it rarely happens this way. It took Mr. Buxtun seven years to convince others to see the abuses for what they were. It has taken other whistle-blowers even longer. Even when the outside world condemns a practice, medical institutions typically insist that the outsiders don’t really understand.

According to Irving Janis, a Yale psychologist who popularized the notion of groupthink, the forces of social conformity are especially powerful in organizations that are driven by a deep sense of moral purpose. If the aims of the organization are righteous, its members feel, it is wrong to put barriers in the way.

This observation helps explain why academic medicine not only defends researchers accused of wrongdoing but also sometimes rewards them. Many of the researchers responsible for the most notorious abuses in recent medical history — the Tuskegee syphilis study, the Willowbrook hepatitis studies, the Cincinnati radiation studies , the Holmesburg prison studies — were celebrated with professional accolades even after the abuses were first called out.

The culture of medicine is notoriously resistant to change. During the 1970s, it was thought that the solution to medical misconduct was formal education in ethics. Major academic medical centers began establishing bioethics centers and programs throughout the 1980s and ’90s, and today virtually every medical school in the country requires ethics training.

Yet it is debatable whether that training has had any effect. Many of the most egregious ethical abuses in recent decades have taken place in medical centers with prominent bioethics programs, such as the University of Pennsylvania , Duke University , Columbia University and Johns Hopkins University , as well as my own institution, the University of Minnesota .

One could be forgiven for concluding that the only way the culture of medicine will change is if changes are forced on it from the outside — by oversight bodies, legislators or litigators. For example, many states have responded to the controversy over pelvic exams by passing laws banning the practice unless the patient has explicitly given consent.

You may find it hard to understand how pelvic exams on unconscious women without their consent could seem like anything but a terrible invasion. Yet a central aim of medical training is to transform your sensibility. You are taught to steel yourself against your natural emotional reactions to death and disfigurement; to set aside your customary views about privacy and shame; to see the human body as a thing to be examined, tested and studied.

One danger of this transformation is that you will see your colleagues and superiors do horrible things and be afraid to speak up. But the more subtle danger is that you will no longer see what they are doing as horrible. You will just think: This is the way it is done.

Carl Elliott ( @FearLoathingBTX ) teaches medical ethics at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of the forthcoming book “The Occasional Human Sacrifice: Medical Experimentation and the Price of Saying No,” from which this essay is adapted.

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America’s Colleges Are Reaping What They Sowed

Universities spent years saying that activism is not just welcome but encouraged on their campuses. Students took them at their word.

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N ick Wilson, a sophomore at Cornell University, came to Ithaca, New York, to refine his skills as an activist. Attracted by both Cornell’s labor-relations school and the university’s history of campus radicalism, he wrote his application essay about his involvement with a Democratic Socialists of America campaign to pass the Protecting the Right to Organize Act . When he arrived on campus, he witnessed any number of signs that Cornell shared his commitment to not just activism but also militant protest, taking note of a plaque commemorating the armed occupation of Willard Straight Hall in 1969.

Cornell positively romanticizes that event: The university library has published a “ Willard Straight Hall Occupation Study Guide ,” and the office of the dean of students once co-sponsored a panel on the protest. The school has repeatedly screened a documentary about the occupation, Agents of Change . The school’s official newspaper, published by the university media-relations office, ran a series of articles honoring the 40th anniversary, in 2009, and in 2019, Cornell held a yearlong celebration for the 50th, complete with a commemorative walk, a dedication ceremony, and a public conversation with some of the occupiers. “ Occupation Anniversary Inspires Continued Progress ,” the Cornell Chronicle headline read.

As Wilson has discovered firsthand, however, the school’s hagiographical odes to prior protests have not prevented it from cracking down on pro-Palestine protests in the present. Now that he has been suspended for the very thing he told Cornell he came there to learn how to do—radical political organizing—he is left reflecting on the school’s hypocrisies. That the theme of this school year at Cornell is “Freedom of Expression” adds a layer of grim humor to the affair.

Evan Mandery: University of hypocrisy

University leaders are in a bind. “These protests are really dynamic situations that can change from minute to minute,” Stephen Solomon, who teaches First Amendment law and is the director of NYU’s First Amendment Watch—an organization devoted to free speech—told me. “But the obligation of universities is to make the distinction between speech protected by the First Amendment and speech that is not.” Some of the speech and tactics protesters are employing may not be protected under the First Amendment, while much of it plainly is. The challenge universities are confronting is not just the law but also their own rhetoric. Many universities at the center of the ongoing police crackdowns have long sought to portray themselves as bastions of activism and free thought. Cornell is one of many universities that champion their legacy of student activism when convenient, only to bring the hammer down on present-day activists when it’s not. The same colleges that appeal to students such as Wilson by promoting opportunities for engagement and activism are now suspending them. And they’re calling the cops.

The police activity we are seeing universities level against their own students does not just scuff the carefully cultivated progressive reputations of elite private universities such as Columbia, Emory University, and NYU, or the equally manicured free-speech bona fides of red-state public schools such as Indiana University and the University of Texas at Austin. It also exposes what these universities have become in the 21st century. Administrators have spent much of the recent past recruiting social-justice-minded students and faculty to their campuses under the implicit, and often explicit, promise that activism is not just welcome but encouraged. Now the leaders of those universities are shocked to find that their charges and employees believed them. And rather than try to understand their role in cultivating this morass, the Ivory Tower’s bigwigs have decided to apply their boot heels to the throats of those under their care.

I spoke with 30 students, professors, and administrators from eight schools—a mix of public and private institutions across the United States—to get a sense of the disconnect between these institutions’ marketing of activism and their treatment of protesters. A number of people asked to remain anonymous. Some were untenured faculty or administrators concerned about repercussions from, or for, their institutions. Others were directly involved in organizing protests and were wary of being harassed. Several incoming students I spoke with were worried about being punished by their school before they even arrived. Despite a variety of ideological commitments and often conflicting views on the protests, many of those I interviewed were “shocked but not surprised”—a phrase that came up time and again—by the hypocrisy exhibited by the universities with which they were affiliated. (I reached out to Columbia, NYU, Cornell, and Emory for comment on the disconnect between their championing of past protests and their crackdowns on the current protesters. Representatives from Columbia, Cornell, and Emory pointed me to previous public statements. NYU did not respond.)

The sense that Columbia trades on the legacy of the Vietnam protests that rocked campus in 1968 was widespread among the students I spoke with. Indeed, the university honors its activist past both directly and indirectly, through library archives , an online exhibit , an official “Columbia 1968” X account , no shortage of anniversary articles in Columbia Magazine , and a current course titled simply “Columbia 1968.” The university is sometimes referred to by alumni and aspirants as the “Protest Ivy.” One incoming student told me that he applied to the school in part because of an admissions page that prominently listed community organizers and activists among its “distinguished alumni.”

Joseph Slaughter, an English professor and the executive director of Columbia’s Institute for the Study of Human Rights, talked with his class about the 1968 protests after the recent arrests at the school. He said his students felt that the university had actively marketed its history to them. “Many, many, many of them said they were sold the story of 1968 as part of coming to Columbia,” he told me. “They talked about it as what the university presents to them as the long history and tradition of student activism. They described it as part of the brand.”

This message reaches students before they take their first college class. As pro-Palestine demonstrations began to raise tensions on campus last month, administrators were keen to cast these protests as part of Columbia’s proud culture of student activism. The aforementioned high-school senior who had been impressed by Columbia’s activist alumni attended the university’s admitted-students weekend just days before the April 18 NYPD roundup. During the event, the student said, an admissions official warned attendees that they may experience “disruptions” during their visit, but boasted that these were simply part of the school’s “long and robust history of student protest.”

Remarkably, after more than 100 students were arrested on the order of Columbia President Minouche Shafik—in which she overruled a unanimous vote by the university senate’s executive committee not to bring the NYPD to campus —university administrators were still pushing this message to new students and parents. An email sent on April 19 informed incoming students that “demonstration, political activism, and deep respect for freedom of expression have long been part of the fabric of our campus.” Another email sent on April 20 again promoted Columbia’s tradition of activism, protest, and support of free speech. “This can sometimes create moments of tension,” the email read, “but the rich dialogue and debate that accompany this tradition is central to our educational experience.”

Evelyn Douek and Genevieve Lakier: The hypocrisy underlying the campus-speech controversy

Another student who attended a different event for admitted students, this one on April 21, said that every administrator she heard speak paid lip service to the school’s long history of protest. Her own feelings about the pro-Palestine protests were mixed—she said she believes that a genocide is happening in Gaza and also that some elements of the protest are plainly anti-Semitic—but her feelings about Columbia’s decision to involve the police were unambiguous. “It’s reprehensible but exactly what an Ivy League institution would do in this situation. I don’t know why everyone is shocked,” she said, adding: “It makes me terrified to go there.”

Beth Massey, a veteran activist who participated in the 1968 protests, told me with a laugh, “They might want to tell us they’re progressive, but they’re doing the business of the ruling class.” She was not surprised by the harsh response to the current student encampment or by the fact that it lit the fuse on a nationwide protest movement. Massey had been drawn to the radical reputation of Columbia’s sister school, Barnard College, as an open-minded teenager from the segregated South: “I actually wanted to go to Barnard because they had a history of progressive struggle that had happened going all the way back into the ’40s.” And the barn-burning history that appealed to Massey in the late 1960s has continued to attract contemporary students, albeit with one key difference: Today, that radical history has become part of the way that Barnard and Columbia sell their $60,000-plus annual tuition.

Of course, Columbia is not alone. The same trends have also prevailed at NYU, which likes to crow about its own radical history and promises contemporary students “ a world of activism opportunities .” An article published on the university’s website in March—titled “Make a Difference Through Activism at NYU”—promises students “myriad chances to put your activism into action.” The article points to campus institutions that “provide students with resources and opportunities to spark activism and change both on campus and beyond.” The six years I spent as a graduate student at NYU gave me plenty of reasons to be cynical about the university and taught me to view all of this empty activism prattle as white noise. But even I was astounded to see a video of students and faculty set upon by the NYPD, arrested at the behest of President Linda Mills.

“Across the board, there is a heightened awareness of hypocrisy,” Mohamad Bazzi, a journalism professor at NYU, told me, noting that faculty were acutely conscious of the gap between the institution’s intensive commitment to DEI and the police crackdown. The university has recently made several “cluster hires”—centered on activism-oriented themes such as anti-racism, social justice, and indigeneity—that helped diversify the faculty. Some of those recent hires were among the people who spent a night zip-tied in a jail cell, arrested for the exact kind of activism that had made them attractive to NYU in the first place. And it wasn’t just faculty. The law students I spoke with were especially acerbic. After honing her activism skills at her undergraduate institution—another university that recently saw a violent police response to pro-Palestine protests—one law student said she came to NYU because she was drawn to its progressive reputation and its high percentage of prison-abolitionist faculty. This irony was not lost on her as the police descended on the encampment.

After Columbia students were arrested on April 18, students at NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study decided to cancel a planned art festival and instead use the time to make sandwiches as jail support for their detained uptown peers. The school took photos of the students layering cold cuts on bread and posted it to Gallatin’s official Instagram. These posts not only failed to mention that the students were working in support of the pro-Palestine protesters; the caption—“making sandwiches for those in need”—implied that the undergrads might be preparing meals for, say, the homeless.

The contradictions on display at Cornell, Columbia, and NYU are not limited to the state of New York. The police response at Emory, another university that brags about its tradition of student protest, was among the most disturbing I have seen. Faculty members I spoke with at the Atlanta school, including two who had been arrested—the philosophy professor Noëlle McAfee and the English and Indigenous-studies professor Emil’ Keme—recounted harrowing scenes: a student being knocked down, an elderly woman struggling to breathe after tear-gas exposure, a colleague with welts from rubber bullets. These images sharply contrast with the university’s progressive mythmaking, a process that was in place even before 2020’s “summer of racial reckoning” sent universities scrambling to shore up their activist credentials.

In 2018, Emory’s Campus Life office partnered with students and a design studio to begin work on an exhibit celebrating the university’s history of identity-based activism. Then, not long after George Floyd’s murder, the university’s library released a series of blog posts focusing on topics including “Black Student Activism at Emory,” “Protests and Movements,” “Voting Rights and Public Policy,” and “Authors and Artists as Activists.” That same year, the university announced its new Arts and Social Justice Fellows initiative, a program that “brings Atlanta artists into Emory classrooms to help students translate their learning into creative activism in the name of social justice.” In 2021, the university put on an exhibit celebrating its 1969 protests , in which “Black students marched, demonstrated, picketed, and ‘rapped’ on those institutions affecting the lives of workers and students at Emory.” Like Cornell’s and Columbia’s, Emory’s protests seem to age like fine wine: It takes half a century before the institution begins enjoying them.

N early every person I talked with believed that their universities’ responses were driven by donors, alumni, politicians, or some combination thereof. They did not believe that they were grounded in serious or reasonable concerns about the physical safety of students; in fact, most felt strongly that introducing police into the equation had made things far more dangerous for both pro-Palestine protesters and pro-Israel counterprotesters. Jeremi Suri, a historian at UT Austin—who told me he is not politically aligned with the protesters—recalls pleading with both the dean of students and the mounted state troopers to call off the charge. “It was like the Russian army had come onto campus,” Suri mused. “I was out there for 45 minutes to an hour. I’m very sensitive to anti-Semitism. Nothing anti-Semitic was said.” He added: “There was no reason not to let them shout until their voices went out.”

From the May 1930 issue: Hypocrisy–a defense

As one experienced senior administrator at a major research university told me, the conflagration we are witnessing shows how little many university presidents understand either their campus communities or the young people who populate them. “When I saw what Columbia was doing, my immediate thought was: They have not thought about day two ,” he said, laughing. “If you confront an 18-year-old activist, they don’t back down. They double down.” That’s what happened in 1968, and it’s happening again now. Early Tuesday morning, Columbia students occupied Hamilton Hall—the site of the 1968 occupation, which they rechristened Hind’s Hall in honor of a 6-year-old Palestinian girl killed in Gaza—in response to the university’s draconian handling of the protests. They explicitly tied these events to the university’s past, calling out its hypocrisy on Instagram: “This escalation is in line with the historical student movements of 1968 … which Columbia repressed then and celebrates today.” The university, for its part, responded now as it did then: Late on Tuesday, the NYPD swarmed the campus in an overnight raid that led to the arrest of dozens of students.

The students, professors, and administrators I’ve spoken with in recent days have made clear that this hypocrisy has not gone unnoticed and that the crackdown isn’t working, but making things worse. The campus resistance has expanded to include faculty and students who were originally more ambivalent about the protests and, in a number of cases, who support Israel. They are disturbed by what they rightly see as violations of free expression, the erosion of faculty governance, and the overreach of administrators. Above all, they’re fed up with the incandescent hypocrisy of institutions, hoisted with their own progressive petards, as the unstoppable force of years’ worth of self-righteous rhetoric and pseudo-radical posturing meets the immovable object of students who took them at their word.

In another video published by The Cornell Daily Sun , recorded only hours after he was suspended, Nick Wilson explained to a crowd of student protesters what had brought him to the school. “In high school, I discovered my passion, which was community organizing for a better world. I told Cornell University that’s why I wanted to be here,” he said, referencing his college essay. Then he paused for emphasis, looking around as his peers began to cheer. “And those fuckers admitted me.”