In the book Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, the protagonist is a girl named Melinda who is struggling with her identity throughout the book.
One moment that is symbolic of this is the day a few weeks after the school year starts when she comes home from school and looks into the mirror. She has been biting her lips hard, damaging them.
This lip-biting, a self harming behavior, may be symbolic of her silence concerning what really happened the night of the party the summer before. She will not speak about it to anyone, and both literally and metaphorically "bites her lips."
She feels at this moment that her mouth does not belong to her anymore, a sign of her feeling disconnected from her identity. She then puts the mirror in the bedroom closet.
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