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Speak, a la Shmoop. Think about the last time you got into a crowded

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elevator. It wasn’t exactly a hotbed for conversation,

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was it? In fact, you may as well have been taking

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the ride with these guys. If silence is golden - as the saying goes

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- why does it make us feel anything but? In Laurie Halse Anderson’s novel, Speak,

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Melinda Sordino is a fourteen-year-old entering high school with a terrible secret.

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She doesn’t want to face what happened to her and believes that, if she doesn’t ever

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talk about it, it will somehow disappear. But no matter how hard she tries . . .

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. . . it doesn’t. In the end, she realizes that she has to break

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her silence if she wants to have any hope of reclaiming her life.

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Which brings us back to our question - why does silence hold such power in our social

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lives? Remember when you were little and you threatened

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to hold your breath until you turned blue? It got your mom’s attention, didn’t it?

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Silence does the same thing; it gets our attention. It can make us feel awkward, like those folks

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in the elevator . . . . . . or it can confuse us when we don’t

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know how to respond. And nobody likes feeling incompetent.

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Think about conversations you’ve had that stopped right in the middle for no good reason

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at all. Didn’t you want to jump right in and fill that dead air as soon as possible?

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We’re all so used to noise and stimuli in our lives, that we don’t know what to do

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when it’s not there. And while some people can handle silence.

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. . . . . many of us can’t.

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Maybe that’s why solitary confinement and the “silent treatment” achieve some pretty

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dramatic results. It’s not all that easy being alone with

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our thoughts. So, if silence confuses us, makes us uncomfortable

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and feels awkward, why do we need it at all? Well, there’s no doubt that a little quiet

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time helps you figure stuff out. . . . . . and put things into perspective.

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There are plenty of times when you just need a break from all the nonsense that’s bombarding

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us 24/7 . . . . . . but, like Melinda, we all have to figure

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out when we have to stand up and speak out . . .

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. . . and when we need to sit down and just be quiet.

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So why do you think silence holds such power in our lives?

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Shmoop amongst yourselves.

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