Being raped by someone changes your life, you feel like an outcast and you feel like you can't speak up. Rape does something to a a person that changes them emotionally. You also can loose all your friends. That's what happened to Melinda in "Speak" by Laurie Halse Anderson.
One thing that rape does to you is make you loose your friends. The way that Melinda lost all her friends was after she was raped she called the cops, she was terrified and didn't know what to do. Her friends didn't talk to her at all because everyone hated Melinda because some kids got arrested at the party. And her friends didn't want to be hated so they stopped talking to Melinda. Her friend didn't know that Melinda got raped, she never told anyone she was too afraid of what people would think. Not even she knew why she didn't say anything. That's basically 3/4 of the reason she had no friends.
Another thing that rape does to you is it makes you feel like an outcast.The definition of Outcast is " a person who is rejected or cast out as from home or society . That's exactly how she felt and how she acted, like an Outcast. She just felt as if the world was against her. She felt like no one want to be with her or cares about her. For example, in the beginning of the school year she had one friend named Heather but then Heather ditched Melinda to hang out with these total plastic snobs who think they're good. Just because she feel like Melinda was basically going through a " Life Sucks Phase". Which made things much more bad for Melinda because it made her feel like an outcast even more than she thought she already was.
Another thing that rape does to a person is the person loses their voice and can't speak up. Before Melinda was raped she would do fun things and act crazy and speak up. But after she got raped by Andy Evans that changed her, she just feel useless and she could easily be taken advantage of. When she was being raped she felt like no one heard her so she felt like she had no voice. She just became permanently unheard. After she just basically made people talk for her. Like Heather always asked her to do favors and she felt when Melinda said nothing that was a yes. And Melinda did all these crazy things for Heather. But finally Melinda had the guts to tell people that she was raped, and to tell Heather "No".
In conclusion, if you get raped you feel like an outcast and you loose your voice. No one hears you. And you feel useless. Like you have no point being in the world. Rape can also change a person from who they really are to someone that they're
actually not.
