Maleeka Character Analysis in "The Skin I'm In" Essay Example

"The most successful people see adversity as a stepping stone to greatness, not as an obstacle." Shawn Achor says. Maleeka is brave, intelligent, and strong in the novel The Skin I'm in, which helped her overcome adversity.

In the novel, Maleeka is brave. As an example, Maleeka risked her safety in order to help John-John when he was being beaten up by the other kids. Despite being bullied by John-John since second grade, Maleeka was the first person to help him when he was in danger. Maleeka put herself between John-John and the kids when he was being beaten up, even though people were present. When the boys go after Maleeka again, Caleb rushes in to help. This shows Maleeka's bravery and kindness. In addition, she fought off the two boys who were harassing her. In the novel, Maleeka herself describes him as "big, he has muscles in his neck and all over," suggesting that not only was it a two-versus-one scenario, but they were also considerably stronger and larger than Maleeka, but she was able to fight her way through by kicking one of them and scratching him with her fingernails before biting his hand. Due to these reasons, Maleeka is a brave character in the book.

In the novel, Maleeka is intelligent. Char's homework, for example, has to be done. It's a great example since Maleeka's clothes are torn, have holes, and don't fit her, so doing the twins' homework constantly makes her the target of pick-up. It looks as if she was planning all of this. Char will also lend Maleeka her clothes. A second time, she enters and wins a contest with her journal. This achievement is made even more impressive by the fact that "the librarian reports that over one hundred students have joined this competition," as described in the novel. Among a hundred choices, Maleeka's writing was the number one choice. The fact that Miss Saunders continuously compliments her diary and writing shows that she is smart. Therefore, Maleeka in the novel is an intelligent character.

Maleeka is a strong character in the novel. At first, she was very negative about herself and put herself down. Maleeka had no confidence at the start of the story; she thought of herself as a freak, as she admitted on the first page, "To tell the truth, she was a freak like me," and she thought of herself as a loser who didn't amount to anything. She didn't like her dark skin because she would be teased about it, and she didn't like her height because she would be teased about it, although Maleeka, as stated in the initial paragraph, has poor self-esteem, which makes her life difficult, particularly at school. She even changed her hairstyle to get acceptance from others. As horrible as this sounds, it turned out to be a positive thing for Maleeka. This is because she learned a lesson at the end of the novel to stand up to Char when she was again insulting her for her skin color when she was practically working for her and getting tortured by her for her schoolwork and making fun of the color of her skin. Because Maleeka finally stood up for herself, this shows how strong a person she was.

Ultimately, Maleeka is brave because she can stand up for herself and others; intelligent since she won the event with over 100 competitors; and strong because she stood up against Char after learning to accept herself.