The hardest part of adolescence is never knowing which direction to take. Teens wonder who their real friends are and what a real friend is. Above all they ask themselves who they are. They are surrounded by many stereotypes and struggle to meet the expectations of their middle or high school classmates. Some will do whatever it takes to fit in with the crowd and community. Focusing particularly on young women, some may admire the image of the ideal woman, who should have a perfect body, intelligence, and marital personality. Then there are those girls who want to break away from what society expects of them, creating themselves to be who they want to be. These are just some of the issues that arise in Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson. In Speak, Melinda's adolescent experience is shaped through the struggles to maintain the traditional female role, represented by the majority of female characters in the novel, while the protagonist also seeks to challenge society's gender norms. One of the struggles Melinda faces that shapes the way she experiences adolescence is through the people she meets in high school who reflect the obvious and stereotypical role of women. Having no friends during her freshman year of high school, Melinda befriends Heather, meanwhile Heather wants to be part of The Marthas. Attempting to remain friends with Heather, she puts pressure on Melinda: “She corners me after the Spanish and begs me to help her. She thinks the Marthas gave her a deliberately impossible job so they could dump her (43). Melinda being calm does not reject his proposal and rather continues to help Heather. In this specific example, the Marthas reveal the typical female figure... middle of paper... the social norm makes it more difficult to shape the person. Melinda faces obstacles in her first year alone, choosing which path to take among the many she faces in the hallways. From Heather, The Marthas, the Cheerleaders struggle to decide whether or not to be like them. She is also conflicted as she strives to resemble the image revealed by Maya Angelou and the suffragettes. These different women that Melinda meets allow her to experience and learn from them through the challenges she has faced. The lack of friends and communication makes her submissive to others. When she observes what the suffragettes and Maya Angelou symbolize to women, she also acts on this by showing how she is growing and learning from past teenage experiences. It is only by the challenges that society brings with it that shape the adolescent experience.