Shout

Nonfiction | Novel/Book in Verse | Adult

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Introduction-Part 1, Page 40

Part 1, Pages 41-79

Part 1, Pages 80-163

Part 2, Pages 164-210

Part 2, Pages 211-261

Part 3, Pages 262-291

Key Figures

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Water

In literature, water is often linked to the unconscious or subconscious mind. Anderson uses water in a similar fashion throughout Shout to give the reader an understanding of her own emotional stability and inner strength throughout her life. Water also serves as a litmus test for Anderson’s own self-confidence and inner strength, as is evident when she is terrified while swimming in a pond, in contrast to when she is a member of the swim team several years later. Water is also a way for Anderson to distance herself from others and get more in touch with herself. Rather than merely symbolizing that she is drowning as she suffers in silence during adolescence, water repeatedly appears as an image of strength despite adversity.

Bodies of water become places where Anderson’s innocence is tested as she learns about the difficult, unfair, and unspoken ways in which men can dominate women. This is first apparent when Anderson joins a swim team as a young girl. She loves to swim, but she begins to see the sexualized behavior of her fellow athletes, which disturbs her even though she can’t fully articulate why. Still, joining a swim team helps her to heal and move forward during her high school years.

Anderson is raped next to a creek. The sound of the water becomes a comfort that helps her to disassociate during the event itself. As she gets older, Anderson studies abroad across the Atlantic Ocean, putting distance between herself and her dysfunctional parents, whom she has learned she cannot help or save. The distance provided by water gives her space to find herself and heal in a new language, far from her ordinary life.

Mouths and Voices

Anderson conjures images of mouths and voices to evoke questions about silence, language, and speech. She often characterizes people in her life, particularly her mother as well as herself, as not having a mouth when they are unable to speak up for themselves. This motif complements the running theme of silence and speech throughout the book, emphasizing its importance by assigning an accompanying image.

Mouths are also significant given the context of Anderson’s own initial reluctance to talk about what happened to her, a problem that plagues Melinda in Speak as well. Anderson is able to act as a mouthpiece for her when Melinda’s disembodied voice calls to her one night. By putting a fictional character’s experience into words (an experience quite similar to her own), Anderson is able to break the cycle of violence and subsequent silence that she and many others have endured.

Readers also encounter the imagery of mouths in Part 2 as Anderson forms a call to action for her reader to support survivors and amplify their voices. Mouths are not merely for speaking one’s own story, but a vessel to help support and validate the stories of others. This idea manifests in more abstract ways as well, such as in the Loud Fences initiative that originated in Australia. Using visual ribbons and flags, a small city vocalized support of sexual assault survivors who came forward to share their stories and seek justice. Anderson views actions like these, in which we give voice to the voiceless, as a radical and essential form of healing.

Her emphasis on voices, too, prompts the reader to consider questions of whose voices we listen to and value, and which voices we may dismiss due to gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, ability, or any other form of marginalization.

Strength, Menstruation, and Femininity

Given that most survivors of sexual assault are women, Anderson plays with feminine images and diction to question how we might characterize femininity as a kind of strength. She often does this through considering the anatomy of men and women, particularly when she discusses menstruation as yet another form of shame forced upon women.

Anderson juxtaposes instances of cold, brutal sexual assault and violence with warm, comforting lines throughout the book. For example, when she travels to Denmark, she writes, “My home in Denmark taught me how to speak / again, how to reinterpret darkness and light, / strength and softness” (114); when she implores women of her generation to reckon with their own memories in order to support younger survivors, she says, “I’m sorry you didn’t get the help you needed / you deserved a soft afghan wrapped around you / people to hold your hands / while you learned to walk again / so stand with us now” (230). Her use of the word “soft” adjacent to violence forms a connection between feminine softness and strength in the face of traumatic memories. This repeated imagery links these two potentially opposing ideas for the reader to encourage them to take action.

She also troubles the preconceived ideas that attributes of femininity, such as menstruation, are inherently disgusting or weak. This approach is particularly notable in the poem “free the bleed,” in which Anderson writes about women’s reproductive systems in poetic terms in order to valorize them and lift them into something extraordinary: “some of us breed, pouring blood / into love, planting his seed in our egg / creating life and feeding it / our red-coated strength / birthing in a torrent of salt / and blood / we are mountains” (225). By describing menstruation as a beautiful and natural phenomenon based in strength and planet Earth, Anderson recasts women’s anatomies as systems worthy of admiration rather than shame.

Punctuation and Spaces

Anderson makes unconventional use of punctuation such as parentheses, quotations marks, ellipses, and negative space throughout Shout to make space for survivors on the pages, particularly survivors whose voices may not otherwise be heard. The imagery that this punctuation creates is meant to prompt the reader to consider whose voices our society has valued and championed when dealing with sexuality and consent, and which voices have been silenced or lost to history.

Anderson draws attention to and plays with punctuation particularly when she wishes to speak to survivors or when she encourages survivors to categorize their traumatic experiences as violence. By holding space within ellipses or quotation marks, for example, Anderson holds a literal space on the page for the reader to include themselves as survivors if they so choose. The significance of this space realized on the page demonstrates Anderson’s call to support survivors loudly and in a multitude of ways, not just with our words but with our actions as well.

She applies punctuation to women’s experiences especially. For example, she proposes that a women’s period needs a new name: “don’t call it a period: / call it an / exclamation point” (225). While Anderson is not using the literal exclamation point (!), she does refer to the punctuation mark as a way to describe something tangible and difficult to describe. Exclamation points denote excitement and enthusiasm, which are the opposite of how many men view menstruation. This image is meant to subvert stereotypes about menstruation by imagining a potential future in which menstruation is celebrated rather than reduced to a source of shame.