The Theme Of Suicide In Jay Asher's '13 Reasons Why'

Adolescence and suicide are the main topics in Jay Asher’s Thirteen Reasons Why book. Throughout the entire book, we are vaguely introduced to multiple characters and are shown multiple different storylines that all lead to one specific event. Every individual character is important since each one becomes a reason for Hannah Baker’s suicide. The reader is also able to understand some of the different aspects that may trigger suicide as well as suicidal thoughts from one of the main characters.
The story begins with Clay Jensen, the narrator of the book, receiving a box full of cassette tapes. As he listens to the first tape he hears Hannah Baker’s voice and discovers that these tapes were made before Hannah had committed suicide. Hannah goes …show more content…
This psychological disturbance portrayed by Hannah Baker is the most common one among adolescents. Along with depression comes cognitive symptoms that include pessimism and hopelessness. It is also believed that girls are more prone to ruminate about issues and feeling a sense of helplessness. Sometimes suicide or suicidal thoughts are a result of depression. In Marcus’s tape, Hannah mentions that after the incident at Rosie’s she had thought about suicide for the first time. After this tape was when Hannah became more pessimistic and hopeless due to the amount of people that she felt had already failed her. The psychopathology chapter talks about how the effects of one stressor factor becomes worse if it is accompanied by other or multiple stress factors. This is evident in Hanna Baker’s case because we are walked through multiple incidents that triggered her suicide. For example, Prior to Marcus’s tape were Justin, Alex, Jessica, Tyler, Courtney, which means that it took six stressful events for Hannah to finally snap which eventually leads to her having her first suicidal thoughts. Moreover, all the stress that Hannah built up ended up being the cause of her internalized disorder. After all the built-up emotions that Hannah has, she decides to go to Mr. Porter with hope that he can be the one to help …show more content…
Hannah opening-up to Mr. Porter might also correlate with what the chapter mentioned about how females are more likely to talk about their depression than males and how they expect self-disclosure to help them feel better. By talking to Mr. Porter, Hannah felt that perhaps he would be able to help her, that’s why she was willing to disclose so much personal information about herself, she no longer wanted to have feelings of hopelessness. She truly believed that opening-up and expressing her emotions might be a solution to all the negative feelings that she has had. This attempt might have saved Hannah, if Mr. Porter had approached the situation with more concern. The obvious lack of intimacy that Hannah felt throughout the entire book seems to have been a major factor that triggered her