Thirteen Reasons Why – Book Review

Trigger Warnings:

Bullying

Suicide

Over winter break, I read a very interesting book, targeted towards young adults, called Thirteen Reason Why by Jay Asher, published in 2007. It touches on many different subjects that I feel really need to be brought up more in our society. This novel hits on many important issues that people avoid more often than not: suicide and bullying being a few of them. I will warn you now that I may spoil certain parts of the book for anyone who wants to read it because in order to fully analyze this book, you need to know what happens because all the interconnecting events leads to the tragic end of the novel.

This novel is about a girl named Hannah Baker who tells her story of how she came to commit suicide to thirteen significant people who all played a part in her life. She talks about how events like certain friendships falling apart ended up with rumors spread about her, one of them being that she is a slut. Guys began making lewd remarks to her, regardless of whether they knew her or not. Girls began looking down on her. These rumors caused her to make new friendships – some, not good ones – that ended up hurting her even more and sliding her deeper into her depression. Hannah also acknowledges her own faults – she says that she could have tried harder to reach out for help, perhaps she could have spoken out. She passes on her thirteen reasons for her suicide to these thirteen significant people. What is interesting is that some of these people did not play a very active part in her life. She was not very close to a few of them but their smallest actions played parts in her slide into depression. She witnessed a horrible attack and could not speak of it, also playing a part in someone else’s tragedy. Jay Asher takes apart, piece by piece, people’s interactions with each other to show how people touch the lives of others – even if they don’t know it. As Hannah Baker says, “I guess that’s the point of it all. No one knows for certain how much of impact they have on the lives of other people. Often we have no clue.”

This novel left a great impact on me as well, leading me to look back on my own interactions with people. Have I ever hurt someone that badly without realizing? Was I ever so careless with my words? Did I ever play a part in spreading malicious rumors? Is there anything I could do in order to make sure that I never make someone suffer like Hannah Baker suffered?

I know that I cannot fix past mistakes, especially since I am not in contact with everyone that I’ve ever met in my life. However, this novel passes on a powerful message to people. It may be targeted towards young adults but I think everyone can learn from this, young and old. It teaches us to always be more aware of our interactions with people, whether we are close to them or not. No matter how different they are from us, even if we do not know them very well – people cannot survive without other people. Humans are social creatures and we live off of everyday interactions, good or bad. We should be careful with what we say to people, be more considerate, and take action whenever bullying happens around us. We’re taught from a young age, “Treat people the way you want to be treated.” But looking around at the bullying problems in schools, I don’t think we really absorb it. It’s not just the way we treat our friends but those different from us: the way guys treat girls, girls treat guys, the way we treat queers, transsexuals, etc. Bullying happens everywhere around us.

• 1 out of 4 teens are Bullied.
• 9 out of 10 LGBT students experienced harassment at school and online.
• 1 out of 5 kids admits to being a bully, or doing some “Bullying.”
• Playground statistics – Every 7 minutes a child is bullied. Adult intervention -4% Peer intervention – 11%. No intervention –   85%.
  (These statistics are from http://stompoutbullying.com/aboutbullying_theissue.php)

Remember, sometimes the most damage we can do is doing nothing at all.