Jay Asher's Novel, 13 Reasons Why

Jay Asher’s novel, 13 Reasons Why deals with the heavy topic of teen suicide and in some parts sexual harassment. It is a novel that carries an important message throughout. This key message being, “You don't know what goes on in anyone's life but your own.” The novel demonstrated how even the smallest of things can cause such negative impacts on other people’s lives. An example of this was when a classmate of Hannah Baker, wrote a ‘best and worst; list, the student that created the list meant it as a joke. Unfortunately, this joke had major effects for Hannah whose name was included in that list. This ‘joke’ caused a great deal of pain for her and it just kept getting worse as more things kept happening. This was a thought provoking novel, …show more content…
However, the author’s description of Hannah and the events she described in her tapes made her come across as hypocritical teen who blamed others for her mistakes. When hearing her reasons, I found that a lot of the time she put herself in the situations that lead to her being let down or hurt. While the tapes showed how Hannah was affected by how badly people treated her, I noticed how much of a hypocrite she could be. It is obvious from reading her dialogue that she hated being used by people, but she did the same thing to other people. I believe that Hannah choose to be the victim and found it easier to blame other people, and this is what diminished any sympathy I had for her.

Although she was a hypocrite at times, I can see how some of her reasons weren’t dramatised, especially near the end of the book where Hannah talks about how a celebrated student at her high school, sexually abused her. No one deserves to go through something so traumatic and I found this part difficult to read. Overall I felt that this novel did carry an important message that was displayed at times but unfortunately I felt that Hannah’s character was developed in a way that made her difficult to sympathise